Opinion ID: 1360636
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: right to counsel and equal protection

Text: The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution expressly guarantees all persons accused of crime the right to be assisted by counsel. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), held the Sixth Amendment's guarantee to be a fundamental right, applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause; Gideon further held the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to require states to provide court-appointed counsel upon request to accused persons who cannot afford to retain their own attorneys. As with other fundamental rights expressly secured by the Constitution, an accused's right to the assistance of counsel must be jealously guarded against erosion by rule or statute, even if the rule or statute furthers an otherwise legitimate state interest: Whatever might be said of Congress' objectives, they cannot be pursued by means that needlessly chill the exercise of basic constitutional rights. The question is not whether the chilling effect is incidental rather than intentional; the question is whether that effect is unnecessary and therefore excessive. United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 582, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 1216, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968) (citations omitted). Jackson unambiguously states the standard for resolving Albert's right-to-counsel claim: whether the provisions of Rule 39 needlessly chill the exercise of [that] basic constitutional right[.] Id. Albert's right to appointed counsel is protected at a second level by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the irrational imposition of harsh conditions on a class of debtors who were provided counsel as required by the Constitution[.] James v. Strange, 407 U.S. at 140-41, 92 S.Ct. at 2034. Nor can discriminatory treatment of indigent defendants be justified by the mere fact that their debt is to the state: We recognize, of course, that the State's claim to reimbursement may take precedence, under appropriate circumstances, over the claims of private creditors and that enforcement procedures with respect to judgments need not be identical. This does not mean, however, that a State may impose unduly harsh or discriminatory terms merely because the obligation is to the public treasury rather than to a private creditor. Id. at 138, 92 S.Ct. at 2033 (footnote omitted). [6] Criminal Rule 39 must be evaluated in light of these standards. Rule 39(b) makes all criminal defendants who are provided court-appointed counsel liable upon conviction for the cost of representation. This liability attaches without regard to an individual defendant's financial ability to repay. The liability automatically attaches in the form of a civil judgment entered without a prior request or demand for payment. Upon a defendant's conviction, the trial court must issue in all cases, sua sponte, a notice of judgment. The amount of the judgment is as automatic as its entry. Under Rule 39(d), the amount of the judgment is not based on services actually received by the defendant; rather, it is selected from a menu of fixed fees pegged to case type and stage at which disposition occurs. The judgment is entered without the right to a trial  jury or nonjury. [7] For that matter, the defendant has no right even to a hearing. [8] A convicted defendant who receives the notice and is capable of filing a written response within ten days of its issuance may object to it; but the rule does not specify any ground for objection, and, given the automatic nature of the judgment, the majority opinion seems to conclude there is essentially none. [9] Along with the notice of judgment, the trial court must send an order requiring the defendant, if eligible, to apply for permanent fund dividends until the judgment is paid in full. Rule 39(c)(1)(A). This requirement is imposed upon pain of contempt. Rule 39(c)(2)(D). Apart from this, the rule requires all defendants who cannot afford to retain counsel to be warned of the consequences of requesting court-appointed counsel  that, upon conviction, they  will be ordered to repay ... the cost of appointed counsel, in accordance with paragraph (d) of this rule [the fee schedule]. Rule 39(b)(2) (emphasis added). This warning must be made at the outset of the case  [b]efore the court appoints counsel, id.  prior to any preliminary contact or consultation with counsel. And the court itself is to deliver the message. Id. A unique set of problems emerges from Rule 39's provisions for entry of judgment without the right to a trial or hearing and its related use of a predetermined schedule of fees. To sustain its position that these aspects of Rule 39 do not unnecessarily chill the exercise of the right to appointed counsel and are not conspicuously more onerous than collection procedures applied to civil debtors, the majority points to the obvious difference between Rule 39 and the recoupment statute found unconstitutional in James v. Strange . James involved a Kansas statute that precluded convicted defendants against whom recoupment judgments were entered from claiming any of the exemptions commonly allowed civil judgment debtors. This denial of exemptions applied only to recoupment judgments for attorney's fees. The Supreme Court found this provision harsh, discriminatory, and impermissible. As the majority in the present case points out, Alaska's recoupment rule, in contrast, expressly allows judgment debtors to claim all commonly allowed exemptions. However, the fact that Rule 39 does not discriminate against indigent defendants in precisely the manner found impermissible in James does not make it constitutional. There are many ways in which a recoupment rule might arbitrarily impose ... harsh conditions on a class of debtors who were provided counsel as required by the Constitution[.] James, 407 U.S. at 140-41, 92 S.Ct. at 2034. Yet the majority's scrutiny of Rule 39 proceeds little further than the aspect focused on by James. The majority fails to recognize, consider, or justify the other unprecedented aspects of Rule 39 that work to the unique disadvantage of indigent criminal defendants who request appointed counsel. In no other area of Alaska law that I am aware of is a private or public debtor virtually stripped of the right to a trial  or even the right to a hearing  and subjected upon ten days' notice to the automatic entry of a final civil judgment  all without even the courtesy of a request or demand for payment. This treatment is unique to indigent defendants who are subject to Rule 39, and it is uniquely harsh. Moreover, in no other area of Alaska law does a recipient of stateprovided professional services become automatically liable to pay a charge based on an inflexible schedule of arguably arbitrary predetermined fees, without regard to the professional services actually rendered in the specific case. Again, the treatment is unique, and despite the majority's protestations to the contrary, it is uniquely harsh. Under Rule 39, the indigent defendant who contemplates exercising the constitutionally granted right to appointed counsel is given one choice on a take-it-or-leave-it basis: accept the automatic entry of a judgment in the amount stipulated by the fee schedule set forth in Rule 39(d) or waive the right to counsel. In an effort to justify this arrangement, the majority repeatedly observes that the fees set by the schedule are intended to be significantly lower than those charged by private counsel[.] This implicit assumption that benevolent undercharging occurs is the majority's keystone to support Rule 39's fee schedule and automatic judgment provision. The majority in effect says that, since the fee schedule charges all indigent defendants rates that are clearly only a fraction of the actual price for similar services by a private attorney, there is no need to worry about any individual defendant being charged for services not actually received, no cause for case-by-case determination of services actually rendered, and no factual issue that could conceivably justify a trial or hearing of right before judgment is entered. The majority's comparison to private counsel fees, however, is misdirected, and its assumption of benevolence is unfounded. Indigent defendants who request appointed counsel do not receive private counsel of their own choice. Instead, they are given agency attorneys and contract defense lawyers who work at a fraction of the cost of private attorneys. A recoupment plan's only legitimate purpose lies in reimbursing the state for actual costs incurred for legal services, not their equivalent value if privately obtained. State v. Lopez, 175 Ariz. 79, 82, 853 P.2d 1126, 1129 (App. 1993) (quoting State v. Keswick, 140 Ariz. 46, 49, 680 P.2d 182, 185 (App. 1984)). The court system thus has no business charging indigent defendants preset rates pegged to the price, or even a fraction of the price, they would otherwise pay on the open market for the attorneys of their own choosing. [10] When the rates charged by Rule 39(d) are examined in light of available statistics reflecting the average cost the state pays per case for providing public representation rather than by comparison to supposed fees private attorneys would charge for providing equivalent services, the seeming benevolence of the fee schedule quickly evanesces. We are left with a hazy informational void in which predicting whether the schedule will overcharge or undercharge any particular defendant becomes impossible, and in which all prospective recipients of public representation appear to stand an appreciable risk of consenting to a judgment that charges them for more than they will actually receive. The Alaska Public Defender Agency Fiscal Year 1992 Report appears to contain the most recent readily available reflection of costs of public representation. The report indicates that during fiscal year 1992 the average cost to the Agency of representing its clients amounted to only $453 per case. [11] Of the eighteen fee categories listed in the Rule 39(d) schedule, only four fall below this cost-per-case figure; the rest surpass it. Three of the four fee categories that do not exceed the cost-per-case average entail $250 fees; this is more than half the average cost incurred by the Agency. The fourth below average fee  the least expensive fee that can be charged under the schedule  is the $200 charge for a misdemeanor change of plea, almost half the average cost. Admittedly, most of the defendants who receive public representation fall into one of the four least expensive fee categories. Thus, the average cost figure plainly does not suggest that Rule 39(d) routinely overcharges all or most defendants. But this is not the point. Because the average cost-per-case figure falls so close to the minimum charges that can be assessed under the schedule and so far below the fees that the schedule charges for so many of the services routinely provided to indigent defendants, the cost-per-case datum creates significant doubt, on a case-by-case basis, as to whether the fee schedule will overcharge a given defendant. Since the average cost per case is so low, predicting with any degree of confidence that most defendants who request appointed counsel will be undercharged, or that the fee schedule will accurately reflect services actually to be rendered in a given case, becomes impossible. [12] Even the lowest scheduled fee might represent a questionable value in many cases. The indigent defendant charged with a first offense DWI who enters a plea of no contest after receiving a half-hour to an hour of an appointed attorney's time and who thereafter receives the standard first offense sentence may have good reason to ask whether the $200 preset charge for a misdemeanor change of plea is in fact a modest fee for the services actually rendered. Yet it would not be surprising to find that this is a commonplace scenario. [13] Hence, the cost-per-case information erodes the majority's tacit premise that the schedule of predetermined fees is a benevolent provision which seldom if ever provides occasion for a reasonable objection. It is crucial to recall that this presumed benevolence is the sine qua non of the challenged rule, the essential rationale the majority relies on to support the multitude of procedural shortcuts that dot its recoupment plan. Remove this keystone, and the rationality of the rule crumbles. Unless the majority opinion can clearly demonstrate that the fee schedule creates no appreciable risk of overcharging indigent defendants, how can it justify a system that automatically enters judgment in the scheduled amount without the right to trial; a system that grants minimal relief  partial remission or time-scheduled payments  only upon post-judgment proof of hardship. Rule 39's fee schedule and its accompanying procedural shortcuts might be defensible if they were necessary, but they are in fact wholly unnecessary. Witness the fact that no similar treatment is accorded any other class of private or public debtor in Alaska. [14] There is no obvious need to subject indigent defendants to discriminatory treatment of this kind. The majority's vague, if not unfounded references to administrative efficiency hardly demonstrate that such harsh measures are necessary to recoup costs of public representation. There is no evidence in the record to support a conclusion that it would be impractical or inefficient to determine the reasonable cost of services actually rendered on a case-by-case basis and to charge convicted defendants this amount. There is also no evidence or information indicating that the right to a prejudgment trial or hearing would prove impractical, inefficient, or unduly burdensome. The majority asserts that indigents who are forced to ask for counsel, unlike their nonindigent counterparts who retain counsel, simply have nothing to litigate. This assertion, however, is factually unsupported. Its validity has never been tested; nor can it ever be tested under the current version of Rule 39, since the rule has been designed to allow no reasonable opportunity for indigent defendants to litigate anything of consequence. [15] There are other uniquely onerous features of Rule 39 that must be addressed. Foremost are the rule's provisions requiring the court to order all eligible defendants against whom a Rule 39 judgment will be entered to apply for permanent fund dividends and authorizing contempt proceedings for noncompliance with this order. See Criminal Rule 39(c)(1)(A) & (2)(D). The majority points to no other area of Alaska law in which recipients of public or private services become automatically liable for the entry of court orders enforceable by contempt that require them to apply for permanent fund dividend payments until their debts are satisfied. The majority also makes no effort to justify this unique aspect of the rule, which is not only harsh and unnecessary, but also economically illogical. [16] Because the threat to strip indigent defendants of permanent fund dividends upon pain of contempt serves no necessary or even useful function, its only predictable effect will be to discourage legitimate requests for appointed counsel. When these provisions are made known to a prospective recipient of appointed counsel who must decide whether to request an attorney, they will almost inevitably be understood as a threat. This is particularly true, and particularly offensive, given that the threat is apt to come directly from a judge  the official specifically charged by the rule with informing defendants of their duty to repay under Rule 39. Rule 39(b)(2). [17] Yet another discriminatory, potentially coercive, and entirely unnecessary aspect of Rule 39 lies in its requirement that the process of advising indigent defendants of their duty to repay under Rule 39 be inserted into the indigent defendant's first courtroom appearance. Rule 39 currently requires that, as a precondition of seeing an attorney, the indigent defendant must in effect make a binding commitment to become a judgment debtor in accordance with the detailed provisions of the recoupment rule. Because the rule calls for the choice as to appointed counsel to be presented to the defendant in open court at the first appearance, the indigent defendant, once advised of Rule 39, may have only moments to absorb the information, to reflect, and to decide  often under the impatient gaze of a judge in a courtroom crowded with spectators, guards, and other defendants awaiting the call of their own cases. And for the vast majority of indigent defendants  those charged with misdemeanors  this decision must be made at virtually the same time as the decision on the plea to be entered. The rule thus inextricably entwines the demand for immediate, binding acquiescence to the entry of a Rule 39 judgment for attorney's fees, not only with the choice of requesting appointed counsel, but also with the already difficult, confusing, and stressful choice of how to plead. Rule 39 makes no provision for the indigent defendant who contemplates requesting appointed counsel to consult with prospective counsel about the professional services that may be rendered, the benefits of representation, the potential merit of the charges, or the risks of self-representation. The rule seemingly makes even the most preliminary access to the advice of counsel contingent on an immediate on-record commitment to the entry of a judgment for fees in accordance with the schedule set out in Rule 39(d). In contrast, the nonindigent defendant will normally have the ability to choose between retaining and waiving counsel after the defendant has already consulted with counsel about the potential benefits and detriments of these options, and frequently after having consulted about the potential merits of the case. Nothing in the rule, or in the schedule of fees included therein, extends to indigent defendants any right to the type of referral and initial consultation that are available as a matter of course through the Alaska Bar Association to nonindigent defendants. Indigent and nonindigent defendants alike can properly be confronted with the economic choice of whether legal representation is worthwhile. As a practical matter, however, nonindigents can make this choice after consulting counsel and reflecting on their options. Rule 39 should put indigent defendants on an equal footing. Rule 39(b)(1) requires that defendants who make a request for appointed counsel during their first court appearance be screened to establish their financial eligibility therefor. The screening process is typically conducted by a designee of the court and occurs after the initial court proceeding has been concluded. There is no apparent reason why the process of advising defendants of their duty to pay the costs of appointed counsel could not similarly be deferred until after a preliminary request for counsel has been made. A final unique and uniquely troubling aspect of Rule 39 inheres in the provision of the rule calling for the court system itself to take charge of the entire process of collecting a state debt. Under the rule, the responsibility for initiating the action and for its prosecution is placed in the hands of the court, together with the responsibility for adjudication, for the entry of judgment, and for enforcing the judgment once entered. Normally, of course, the Department of Law is responsible for initiating and prosecuting actions for state debt; the courts adjudicate and enter judgment. I can think of no other situation in which the entire menu of collecting a debt, from soup to nuts, is heaped onto the court system's plate. This unique aspect of the rule is troubling because of the appearance it creates. For it inevitably tends to foster the appearance of conflict; it thereby compromises the court's ability to hold itself out as neutral arbiter of justice. In Public Defender Agency v. Superior Court, 534 P.2d 947 (Alaska 1975), the Department of Law suggested that the court system itself, through the court trustee, take responsibility for prosecuting contempt actions. This court rejected the suggestion: A well established principle of law is that the court may not combine prosecutorial and judicial functions. Although this precept most often arises in the criminal context, it is equally applicable in the civil area where the conflict of interest and the combination of functions is as readily apparent. For this reason, it would be unwise if not unconstitutional, as a violation of the doctrine of separation of powers, to charge the court trustee with the duty to prosecute contempt actions. Id. at 951-52 (citations and footnote omitted). Here, too, there is a readily apparent conflict in the court system taking charge of the prosecution and adjudication of debts for appointed counsel. When viewed through the eyes of an indigent defendant at an arraignment, this conflict may appear to infect, not only the court's neutrality with respect to adjudication of recoupment issues, but also its neutrality with respect to the criminal charges that provide occasion for attorney's fees to arise. This feature of Rule 39, too, is unnecessary. Surely it is not indispensable to an administratively efficient recoupment plan that the court system itself initiate and prosecute all recoupment actions; just as surely the Department of Law can be entrusted, as it is in other matters of public debt, with this job. Many indigent defendants who arrive in court for their first appearance are already suspicious of the court system's ability to dispense justice. These suspicions can only be confirmed when the defendants learn, not only that they will be required to repay the state for court-appointed counsel, but that the court itself will prosecute the case against them if they fail. The confirmation, in turn, may quickly lead to a waiver of counsel that is born of frustration and hopelessness. I must emphasize that, for purposes of determining whether Rule 39 violates Albert's constitutional right to counsel, the threat of enforcing this kind of a recoupment plan against a prospective recipient of appointed counsel is as significant as its actual enforcement. As I indicated at the outset, I find nothing impermissible in presenting the indigent defendant with the same economic choice as to representation as the nonindigent defendant must make. But I find little similarity, in kind or circumstance, between the economic choice the nonindigent makes and the choice presented to an indigent defendant under Rule 39. Imagine a criminal justice system that allowed a defendant who could afford to hire an attorney the right to consult with and retain counsel only if the defendant made an express request for counsel in open court after being told, by the judge personally, that counsel could be retained only in accordance with a predetermined schedule which arbitrarily pegged fees to the number and kind of proceedings the defendant engaged in; that upon convicting the defendant the court would automatically enter a civil judgment for the scheduled amount of fees and would automatically order the defendant, upon pain of contempt, to apply for permanent fund dividend payments until the judgment was satisfied in full; and that, although the defendant could file an objection within ten days of notice of entry of judgment and the court would have discretion to hold a hearing upon receipt of the objection, there would be no right to a trial or a hearing as to the judgment's entry. To be sure, this imaginary system would not long survive if an attempt were made to foist it on paying defendants. And the reason it would not survive is precisely that the paying defendant in our imaginary system would obviously face a choice that is patently different in kind from the economic choice that the same paying defendant faces in deciding whether to retain counsel under our current system. Yet the choice presented to the nonindigent defendant in our hypothetical situation is essentially the same choice that Rule 39 now foists on the indigent defendant who cannot afford to retain an attorney and must decide whether to request appointed counsel. Because this choice is profoundly different in kind from the economic choice which must be made by a non-indigent accused of crime, there is compelling reason to ask whether subjecting defendants to the potentially chilling effect of such disparate treatment is actually necessary. Under the test of United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. at 582, 88 S.Ct. at 1216-17, the pertinent question for purposes of determining whether Rule 39 violates Albert's right to counsel is whether the choices facing indigent defendants under the rule needlessly chill the exercise of [the] basic constitutional right [to counsel]. In other words, whether they are unnecessary and therefore excessive. Id. And, under the equal protection test described in James v. Strange, 407 U.S. at 138-39, 92 S.Ct. at 2033, it is pertinent to inquire whether the state has impose[d] unduly harsh or discriminatory terms merely because the obligation is to the public treasury rather than to a private creditor[,] and whether [t]he indigent defendant ... is uniquely disadvantaged in terms of the practical operation of the [rule]. Most indigent defendants haled into court on criminal charges will have enough economic savvy to understand that Rule 39's method of debt collection is not mainstream  that it is not the conventional way we go about organizing and enforcing relationships between creditors and debtors in our American legal and social systems. It is thus not unreasonable to expect that many indigent defendants will sense palpable unfairness when confronted in open court by a judge who conditions their access to counsel upon the nonnegotiable demand that they assent without significant procedural recourse to the entry of an adverse judgment for attorney's fees in a predetermined amount which bears no perceptible relationship to the value of services that may actually be rendered. It seems quite reasonable to expect many indigent defendants in these circumstances to be discouraged from requesting counsel. Indeed, a more intimidating and coercive setting  one less conducive to a knowing, reasoned and voluntary choice as to the exercise of the right to appointed counsel  would be difficult to design. It escapes me how the majority can conclude that the procedural setting prescribed by Rule 39 is not coercive; that it does not discourage the exercise of the constitutionally secured right to counsel, but rather entails a choice no different in kind from the economic choice which must be made by a nonindigent accused of crime. The majority's effort to skirt the discriminatory nature and chilling effect of these provisions verges on the paradoxical. The majority holds that the question of chilling is not ripe, since Albert has not proved a chilling effect. [18] At issue, however, is Rule 39's potential for chilling the exercise of the right to counsel. To prevail, Albert need not allege that he was in fact chilled; nor must he demonstrate that others have been. United States v. Jackson , for example, considered a federal kidnapping statute under which the death penalty could be applied only in the case of a defendant who requested a jury trial. The Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty provision, holding that it violated the constitutionally protected right to a jury trial by unnecessarily chilling the exercise of that right. 390 U.S. at 570, 88 S.Ct. at 1210. The Court issued this ruling even though the defendants had not personally been chilled from exercising the right to a jury trial  in fact, they had not yet been tried and had apparently produced no evidence establishing that others had been chilled. See id., 390 U.S. at 571, 88 S.Ct. at 1210-11. Likewise, in City of Anchorage v. Scavenius, 539 P.2d 1169 (Alaska 1975), this court was asked to construe Civil Rule 72(k) to allow an award of attorney's fees against an unsuccessful landowner in a condemnation case. In rejecting the proposed interpretation, this court relied in large part on the potential chilling effect that such an interpretation might have on the property owner's willingness to assert the constitutional right to just compensation for the condemned property. [19] This court expressed no reluctance to consider the chilling effect issue on a purely predictive basis. For constitutional purposes, the relevant inquiry is how many potential recipients of appointed counsel have not been immune to the chilling treatment they received in the courtroom; how many have declined to make an in-court request for appointed counsel due to the uniquely intimidating nature of Rule 39. There are no statistics to illuminate this issue; the court system has failed to keep them. Given this failure, it is at once unfair to fault Albert for his inability to prove Rule 39's chilling effect and anomalous to expect that anyone will ever be able to offer such proof. I would find Rule 39 violative of the constitutionally guaranteed rights to counsel and to equal protection.