Opinion ID: 1900957
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Request for Public Funds

Text: The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution, as applied to the states through the fourteenth amendment's due process clause, guarantees to every criminal defendant a fair trial and the right to the effective assistance of counsel. The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment further ensures that no defendant will be deprived of his rights on account of his poverty. The Maine Constitution echoes the Bill of Rights in these matters, guaranteeing every criminal defendant an impartial trial, the assistance of counsel, and equal protection of the laws. Me. Const. art. I, §§ 6, 6-A. Read together, these three guarantees have been interpreted to require that an indigent defendant be provided with a court-appointed lawyer at trial, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), and at a first appeal as of right, Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963). A free hearing or trial transcript must also be provided if that transcript is necessary to the defendant's defense or appeal. Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956); Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226, 92 S.Ct. 431, 30 L.Ed.2d 400 (1971); State v. Curtis, 399 A.2d 1330 (Me. 1979). Defendant argues that her rights to a fair trial, to the effective assistance of counsel, and to the equal protection of the laws were violated when the Superior Court authorized only an additional $500 to pursue further her jury pool challenge. We agree, of course, with the principle on which her claim must be based: that the State must. . . provide indigent prisoners with the basic tools of an adequate defense. Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. at 227, 92 S.Ct. at 433. And we agree that under some circumstances an indigent criminal defendant is entitled to funding for services other than an attorney and a transcript. Expert assistance such as Anaya sought must be made available when it is necessary in order to insure effective preparation of [the] defense by [defendant's] attorneys. Mason v. Arizona, 405 F.2d 1345, 1351 (9th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 936, 95 S.Ct. 1145, 43 L.Ed.2d 412 (1975). However, such assistance is not mandatory but rather depends upon the need as revealed by the facts and circumstances of each case. Id. at 1352. Mason was a federal habeas corpus case brought by a defendant whose motion for investigative funds had been denied by the Arizona judge presiding over his murder trial. The Ninth Circuit held that no constitutional violation is demonstrated until the defendant shows that the denial or restriction of . . . funds has substantially prejudiced the defendant at the state court trial. 405 F.2d at 1352. Moreover, in determining whether such a showing has been made, due consideration must be given to the question of whether defense counsel, at the time of requesting the allowance of funds, made as complete a showing of necessity as could then be reasonably expected of him. Id. This two-part test, which requires the defendant to make a reasonable showing of necessity at the trial stage and a showing on appeal that he has been prejudiced by the denial of funds below, has been adopted by a number of state and federal courts faced with claims that indigent defendants were wrongly denied state funds with which to defend themselves against criminal charges. See, e.g., Williams v. Martin, 618 F.2d 1021, 1026 (4th Cir.1980) (expert medical witness); Smith v. Enomoto, 615 F.2d 1251, 1252 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 866, 101 S.Ct. 199, 66 L.Ed.2d 84 (1980) (investigative services); McKenzie v. Osborne, 640 P.2d 368, 374-75 (Mont.1982) (psychiatrist); Oregon v. Acosta, 41 Or.App. 257, 260, 597 P.2d 1282, 1284 (1979) (interpreter and polygraph expert). In State v. Ledger, 444 A.2d 404, 420 (Me. 1982), we implicitly endorsed the Mason standard ourselves, holding that the indigent defendant in that case was properly denied funds to investigate possible juror prejudice because the court below was not presented with a sufficient basis to conclude that such an investigation would be necessary. In Anaya I, 444 A.2d at 895, we suggested in a dictum that state funds for expert services should be provided under circumstances `in which a reasonable attorney would engage such services for a client having the independent financial means to pay for them'. The quote came from United States v. Bass, 477 F.2d 723, 725 (9th Cir.1973), which was interpreting a provision of the federal Criminal Justice Act of 1964, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(e) (1976). Section 3006A(e) authorizes federal courts to furnish indigent criminal defendants with funds for services necessary for an adequate defense. The reasonable attorney standard stated in Bass was an attempt to define a clear standard for deciding what constitutes `necessity' under § 3006A(e). 477 F.2d at 725. Other federal courts have articulated section 3006A(e)'s necessity rule without any reference to what a reasonable attorney would or would not do. See, e.g., United States v. Canessa, 644 F.2d 61, 64 (1st Cir.1981); United States v. Mundt, 508 F.2d 904, 908 (10th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 949, 95 S.Ct. 1682, 44 L.Ed.2d 103 (1975); United States v. Washabaugh, 442 F.2d 1127, 1130 (9th Cir. 1971). The issues and arguments presented by the present appeal have convinced us that, while the Bass standard may be appropriate for funding requests made in the federal courts under section 3006A(e), it cannot be the threshold test for making out a straight constitutional claim in the absence of such a statute. Neither the state nor the federal constitution requires that an indigent defendant be provided with every service thought to be reasonable by attorneys with paying clients charged with serious crimes. As between rich and poor defendants, absolute equality is not required; lines can be and are drawn. Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. at 357, 83 S.Ct. at 816. An indigent defendant has a constitutional right only to those services essential or necessary to an adequate defense. Therefore, we hold today that an indigent accused requesting public funds for experts must first show the trial court, to the extent he reasonably can then be expected to do so, why the services are necessary for an adequate defense; to appeal successfully from a denial of his request for funds, he must have been substantially prejudiced by the action of the trial court. Careful analysis of the research projects that Anaya proposed to carry out with additional funding reveals that, as to each, Anaya has failed to satisfy one or both of those two requirements. Defendant asked the Superior Court to give her up to $29,000, in addition to the funds already authorized, to investigate and document the possible underrepresentation of various groups in Cumberland County's jury pools. Dr. McEwen's affidavit, submitted in support of defendant's Motion for Authorization, fully explained the uses to which the money would be put. Through mail and phone surveys, personal interviews, and computer analyses, Dr. McEwen proposed to do essentially two things. First, he wanted to document as reliably as possible the claimed underrepresentation of persons aged 18 through 24, persons who had not completed high school, and blue-collar workers in the Cumberland County jury pools. To do this, he intended to analyze the returned juror questionnaires from 1980-81 and 1981-82 that had already been made available to him (these contained information on the prospective jurors' ages, educational achievements, and occupation), to conduct personal interviews with 1980-81 and 1981-82 jury pool members who had failed to return questionnaires, and to survey, by mail or by phone, members of earlier jury pools whose returned questionnaires no longer were available. Second, he proposed to investigate the possible underrepresentation, in several years' worth of jury pools, of groups defined by sex, national origin, religion, and low income. This information was not available to Dr. McEwen through the existing juror questionnaires; consequently, he was prepared to survey a sample of the 1980-81 and 1981-82 jury pool members, either by mail or by telephone. Because personal income is considered to be a very private matter in our society, wrote Dr. McEwen, questions about income would have to be `buried' in a longer questionnaire dealing with social and political attitudes in order for valid data to be obtained. As to that portion of Anaya's funding request earmarked for use in further documentating the alleged underrepresentation of the young, the undereducated, and blue-collar workers, we must affirm the Superior Court's denial of the motion because Anaya was not substantially prejudiced by that denial. Duren v. Missouri requires a defendant to show that a distinctive group is systematically underrepresented in the pool from which the trial jury was selected. In this case, Anaya failed to make any showing that the young, the undereducated, and blue-collar workers are distinctive groups in Cumberland County. Her jury pool challenge would have failed, therefore, no matter how sophisticated her statistics were on the underrepresentation of these groups in recent jury pools. For the same reasons, we must affirm the Superior Court's denial of the motion as to those funds with which Anaya proposed to prove that low income persons were statistically underrepresented in the jury pools. Poor people do not constitute a cognizable group for jury challenge purposes absent proof of their distinctiveness in the relevant community, and Dr. McEwen's affidavit shows that the state funds, had they been authorized, would not have been used to make the required showing of distinctiveness. [9] As to that portion of Anaya's funding request earmarked for her expert's use in researching the possible underrepresentation of groups defined by sex, religion, and national origin, we conclude that the Superior Court correctly denied the motion because Anaya failed to show, to the extent she reasonably could be expected to do so, why the research was necessary for an adequate defense. Even if we assume that all of those groups would qualify as distinctive without proof of their cohesiveness and community of interest in Cumberland County, we note that Anaya failed to tell the court why she had any reason to believe that those groups might be underrepresented in the jury pools. The record is devoid of any theory or even an articulable hunch to indicate that research in this direction might prove fruitful. The criminal defendant's right to an adequate defense does not include a right to go on a wild goose chase at public expense.