Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at the Justice Department's National Public Defense Day Tour in Des Moines, Iowa

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Let me begin by thanking everyone for joining this discussion today. Without adequately trained, well-resourced, and available indigent defense, our justice system cannot function fairly. Every day, defenders answer this call with compassion, resilience, and commitment, often with too few resources and in the face of daunting challenges. So, thank you.

As everyone in this room knows, this week marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright. 

In 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy said that because of Gideon, “the whole course of American legal history has been changed.” “The story of the Gideon case,” he said, “gives us profound insight into the nature of our judicial system at its best – and into the basic sense of human justice on which it is founded.”

Gideon wasn’t just a sea change – it was a promise, to build a better, fairer system of justice. 60 years later, as we take stock of our record to deliver on that promise, we see there is still much work to do.

The Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) is working with officials across the department to commemorate this anniversary by lifting up the right to counsel, celebrating the importance of public defenders, and highlighting important issues and challenges through a historic National Public Defense Day Tour.

The tour stopped in Miami, Florida; Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Muscogee (Creek) Nation; Nashville, Tennessee; Las Vegas, Nevada; and now Des Moines, Iowa. Members of Justice Department leadership joined ATJ Director Rachel Rossi at each of these stops, including Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Kenneth Polite and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs Amy Solomon. 

At these tour stops, the Justice Department has met with local public defenders and others, and discussed elevating public defense as a career path, expanding racial equity, promoting holistic defense models, supporting the unique issues faced in tribal and rural communities, access to counsel in pretrial detention, and much more.

I am pleased to join the Office for Access to Justice here in Des Moines, as we wrap up the traveling portion of the tour and look towards Saturday, March 18, National Public Defense Day.

We wanted to come here and hear from you, because we know that Iowa is facing a critical shortage of contract lawyers to represent indigent clients. According to the Iowa Bar Association, the number of available contract attorneys has dropped about 50% since 2014. The shortage has resulted in court delays for indigent criminal defendants, almost a third of whom are juveniles.  

We know the public defender, the Chief Justice and others on your Supreme Court, and the Bar Association, are all trying to raise awareness around and find solutions to this issue.

I am looking forward to hearing from you about the contributors to this problem, and to discuss possible solutions. We know that Iowa is not the only state where the bar panel model is facing these issues.

We also wanted to come here to hear more about the specific issues faces by defenders in rural areas. A lack of funding and available defenders means that it is often difficult and time-consuming for people living in rural areas to secure qualified counsel.

I don’t need to tell folks in this room that legal deserts – where available legal services are scarce or can’t meet demand – disproportionately affect rural communities, and particularly low-income communities in these areas.

While public defense is under-resourced all over the country, and we know the profession faces widespread recruitment and retention issues, rural areas pose unique challenges, often exacerbating these problems.

These challenges may result in the need to travel hundreds of miles, or lengthy and expensive delays for routine legal work. Even when remote technology is expanded for court hearings, often in attempts to increase access, lack of access to broadband in some rural communities only further expands the justice gap. 

In some jurisdictions, the dearth of qualified counsel means that criminal defendants are placed on long “waiting lists” until a lawyer becomes available.

These delays may mean that individuals languish in jail for weeks while they wait. For people who may already face challenges related to lack of resources, court delays like these can result in serious consequences – that would not befall a wealthier person or even someone living where defenders are more widely available – such as lost jobs, loss of housing, and other adverse consequences, all before their charges have even been adjudicated.

The Justice Department is committed to expanding access to services in rural communities, and we will use all of the tools at our disposal.

For example, here in Iowa the department has awarded grants to expand family treatment court services to rural communities where these services are unavailable.

And the department’s Community Oriented Policing Office has resources and technical assistance specifically for rural law enforcement agencies.

I am looking forward to hearing more about these challenges and possible solutions, and I am particularly interested to hear about the experiences of the Gideon Fellows here and what drew them to public defense.

Finally, we wanted to visit Iowa to hear more about the practice of public defense assessments or costs to secure representation.

According to a report last year from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA), Iowa is one of 42 states, plus the District of Columbia, that authorizes assessment of fees to individuals exercising a Constitutional right to have a lawyer appointed to them because they cannot afford one.

According to the NLADA report, Iowa assesses some of the highest public defense fees in the nation. This means, as many of you here are likely aware, at the end of a case, individuals who could not afford a lawyer are responsible for the cost of their public defender or court-appointed attorney and any other fees associated with their defense.

Although individuals are entitled to a hearing to determine their ability to pay, the NLADA report notes that the court process of evaluating a person’s ability to pay is not standardized and overly burdensome, which may lead to assessed fees that can never be repaid by the individual or recouped by the state.

I am looking forward to hearing about the process to recoup the cost of legal assistance provided by court-appointed counsel, how it impacts representation by private court-appointed attorneys, and how this challenge compounds the other challenges faced by the communities served by public defense.

As a career civil rights lawyer, my focus has always been to ensure that the promises made in the Constitution are made real in the lives of the people living in this country. The Sixth Amendment is one of the most important of those promises, but we have work to do to make that promise real for everyone.

I firmly believe that the best way to get anything done, especially in government, is to listen and engage with those affected by and doing the work on the ground. 

Defenders know better than most how systemic disparities and income inequality affect justice system outcomes, and because of that, they are well-positioned to identify possible solutions. That’s another reason these conversations on this tour are so important: Public defender perspectives and experiences are unique from those of other stakeholders in the criminal justice system. 

And that’s also why I am pleased to join the Office for Access to Justice in announcing an important new effort to support public defense: the creation of a position within the Office focused on support for, collaboration and engagement with the state and local public defense community. 

With a dedicated attorney focused on state and local public defense, the Office for Access to Justice will entrench engagement with the public defense community as a regular practice, promote expanded resources for public defense, amplify the voices of defenders, and reinvigorate a robust Sixth Amendment Statement of Interest practice to ensure federal interests in right to counsel issues are protected. 

I’ll turn it over to Director Rossi to provide you with more details.