Opinion ID: 1088668
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Purported Sixth Amendment Violations

Text: We reject FACDL's attempt to distinguish private registry counsel from the OCCCRC based on a purported lack of independence. Essentially, FACDL asserts that representation by an appointed attorney  as opposed to an elected public defender  runs the risk of violating an indigent defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. [9] However, FACDL has cited no evidence or case law to support the proposition that the creation of a separate appointed office to handle a public defender's conflict cases implicates the independent professional responsibilities of the attorneys who work in those offices or other constitutional rights to effective counsel under the Sixth Amendment or the Florida Constitution. In State ex rel. Smith v. Brummer, 426 So.2d 532, 533 (Fla.1982), this Court emphasized: The state is constitutionally obliged to respect the professional independence of the public defenders whom it engages. The decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), established the right of state criminal defendants to the [g]uiding hand of counsel at every step of the proceedings against [them]. Id. at 345, 83 S.Ct. at 797 (quoting from Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 68-69, 53 S.Ct. 55, 64, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932)). The United States Supreme Court opinion in Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 102 S.Ct. 445, 70 L.Ed.2d 509 (1981), concisely summarizes this Court's view concerning the primary purpose of the public defender. Quoting from Ferri v. Ackerman, 444 U.S. 193, 204, 100 S.Ct. 402, 409, 62 L.Ed.2d 355 (1979), the Court agreed that His [the public defender's] principal responsibility is to serve the undivided interests of his client. Indeed, an indispensable element of the effective performance of his responsibilities is the ability to act independently of the Government and to oppose it in adversary litigation. As Brummer indicates, the independence of the public defender is of utmost importance to its duties to indigent defendants. In addition, this Court has also noted that the public defender is an advocate, who once appointed owes a duty only to his client, the indigent defendant. His role does not differ from that of privately retained counsel. Schreiber v. Rowe, 814 So.2d 396, 398 (Fla.2002). Whether an indigent defendant is represented by an elected public defender, the appointed regional counsel or a private attorney appointed by the court, the attorney has an independent professional duty to effectively and zealously represent his or her client. See Wilson v. Wainwright, 474 So.2d 1162, 1164 (Fla.1985) ([T]he basic requirement of due process in our adversarial legal system is that a defendant be represented in court, at every level, by an advocate who represents his client zealously within the bounds of the law. Every attorney in Florida has taken an oath to do so and we will not lightly forgive a breach of this professional duty in any case.). In the context of the Sixth Amendment, effective representation does not depend upon the office structure from which the attorney came or for whom the attorney works, but the actual legal representation provided to the individual client. For example, when looking at the compensation rates for private attorneys in a criminal case, this Court in Makemson v. Martin County, 491 So.2d 1109 (Fla.1986), ruled that a statute imposing a maximum fee structure for court-appointed counsel was unconstitutional as applied in cases where exceptional circumstances required counsel to invest more time and effort to effectively represent the client. Id. at 1114. The Court concluded that an arbitrary fee cap unconstitutionally affected a defendant's Sixth Amendment right by refusing to allow the trial court to compensate counsel for spending the time necessary to provide the defendant with effective representation. Id. We reached a similar result in Schommer v. Bentley, 500 So.2d 118, 120 (Fla. 1986), which involved the constitutionality of a maximum fee statute as it related to the compensation of two attorneys on a single charge, and in Olive v. Maas, 811 So.2d 644, 654 (Fla.2002), concerning the application of maximum fee schedules in capital collateral cases. In both of these cases the Court followed its reasoning in Makemson and concluded that an indigent defendant's Sixth Amendment rights would be violated if in exceptional circumstances counsel's fees were improperly limited. Id.; Schommer, 500 So.2d at 120. Conversely, in Hatten v. State, 561 So.2d 562 (Fla. 1990), the Court granted a mandamus petition and concluded that the Public Defender for the Tenth Judicial Circuit had not provided Hatten with effective representation where, due to a backlog, it failed to safeguard Hatten's interests and act with reasonable diligence in filing briefs in his case. Id. at 565. These decisions indicate that it is not the form of representation that implicates the Sixth Amendment, but rather a question of whether the representation itself is effective. Accordingly, the creation of the OCCCRC does not implicate any of the concerns at issue in Makemson and its progeny or Hatten, such as the maximum amount of time that can be expended or the maximum compensation an attorney may be paid in an individual case. Thus, we conclude that the mere creation of the OCCCRC does not adversely impact either the independent judgment of the appointed attorneys or the right to effective representation under the Sixth Amendment.