Court Opinion

ID: 9734714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:44:00.097388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:50.783760
License: Public Domain

UHLENHOPP, Justice
(concurring specially).
We have here an indigent defendant to whom $900 was available ($800 from his mother and $100 from his own earnings) to retain an attorney. The attorney was paid *295that amount and now asks public funds for investigative services on defendant’s behalf — a handwriting expert and depositions.
I have no doubt that an indigent defendant is constitutionally entitled to investigative services at public expense in appropriate cases as a matter of equal protection of the laws, since an affluent defendant could obtain them with his own funds. Defendant’s mother is not obligated to provide them.
The General Assembly has provided the means for defendant as an indigent to have investigative services. It has enacted section 815.7, The Code 1981:
An attorney appointed by the court to represent any person charged with a crime in this state shall be entitled to a reasonable compensation which shall be the ordinary and customary charges for like services in the community to be decided in each case by a judge of the district court, including such sum or sums as the court may determine are necessary for investigation in the interests of justice and in the event of appeal the cost of obtaining the transcript of the trial and the printing of the trial record and necessary briefs in behalf of the defendant. Such attorney need not follow the case into another county or into the appellate court unless so directed by the court at the request of the defendant, where grounds for further litigation are not capricious or unreasonable, but if such attorney does so his or her fee shall be determined accordingly. Only one attorney fee shall be so awarded in any one case except that in class “A” felony cases, two may be authorized.
I think that if defendant desires public funds he must play according to the rules of the game provided by the General Assembly. Since section 815.7 is restricted to “attorney[s] appointed by the court” defendant will have to apply to have his present attorney so appointed. The attorney will then be entitled to reimbursement for investigative services in accordance with the section — “such sum or sums as the court may determine are necessary for investigation in the interests of justice” — provided he shows his private retainer is used up.
This is the point at which I cannot accept defendant’s argument. Defendant apparently believes that'what happened to the retainer the attorney received is none of the public’s business. I believe it becomes the public’s business when defendant asks for public funds. I further believe that the attorney must show the retainer was used up for legal services and expense under the standard in section 815.7 — “the ordinary and customary charges for like services in the community.”
At bottom, defendant’s argument raises the issue of whether the profession of law has become a private business completely or whether it has retained some of its old public aspect. For generations the private aspect was underemphasized by legislatures. Attorneys defended indigents gratuitously in the federal courts and received a mere pittance in the Iowa courts. Today in the federal courts such attorneys are compensated by the public, and in Iowa courts they receive from the public the ordinary and customary charges in the community. I believe, however, that we should not swing from one extreme to the other and nullify altogether the traditional public aspect of the profession of law. As officers of the court, attorneys have a higher obligation than tradesmen. I would read section 815.7 in that light when applying it to the attorney who is compensated partially privately and partially publicly. When such an attorney asks for public compensation, I would require him to account for the use of his private retainer on the basis of the ordinary and customary charges in the community.
Thus if a retained attorney has provided legal services and expense, still has further services to provide, and asks to be appointed at public expense so that he can receive public payment for his further services, he should be required to show that the retainer was used for past services and expense and in conformity with the standard of section 815.7 — the ordinary and customary charges for like services in the community. The *296same should be true when a retained attorney is asking for expense money from the public, as here, as distinguished from public money for his own further services.
Section 815.7 does not expressly deal with the case of the attorney who is paid partially from private funds and partially from public funds, nor does it exclude such cases. I would hold that those cases come within the section, and that they are subject to the provisions of the section. The section does not expressly require, either, that the attorney partially paid from private funds must disclose that fact when he asks for public funds. But the situation would be unthinkable in which an attorney who has received $1000 privately would not disclose that fact to the court and account for it when asking for a fee from the public, whether for his own services or for expenses.
I would sustain the writ and permit defendant to apply to the district court for appointment of his retained attorney at public expense upon accounting for the retainer of $900.