Court Opinion

ID: 9765434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:02:45.265442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.946110
License: Public Domain

SHERRY BRASHEAR, Special Justice, and LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, we dissent. For the reasons set out below, we would reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the Knott Circuit Court.
The substantive issue in this appeal, to borrow from the language of both the majority of this court and that of the Court of Appeals, is whether Knott Circuit Judge Morgan had the prerogative to intrude upon the function of providing counsel to indigent criminal defendants assigned to the Department of Public Advocacy (hereinafter DPA) by the legislature’s enactment of Chapter 31 of Kentucky Revised Statutes. We agree with Judge Miller of the Court of Appeals that the creation of the DPA did not divest the Knott Circuit Court of its inherent ability “to do all things reasonably necessary to the administration of justice in the case before it.” Smothers v. Lewis, Ky., 672 S.W.2d 62, 64 (1984).
The members of the majority have allowed themselves to be beguiled by the attractive convolutions of Chapter 31, much as the Aegean sailors were diverted by the Sirens. Once lured into its complexities, however, ratiocination is doomed. While Chapter 31 seems to fill the entire perceptual field, and to engulf every set of facts held up to it, it fails to cover all possibilities, including present circumstances. Hence, the majority has been led, mistakenly, to conclude that, in every circumstance, a trial court must bow to the DPA both in the appointment and compensation of counsel to indigents accused of crimes.
Though the majority denies that this case concerns either the separation of powers doctrine or the ultimate power of the judiciary, it frequently and repeatedly alludes to the discussion of these concepts in Bradshaw v. Ball, Ky., 487 S.W.2d 294 (1972). Bradshaw states “[t]he judiciary’s reason for existence is to adjudicate,” not to “appropriate money,” Id. at 294 (emphasis original), but it does not exclude the power and responsibility inherent in the judiciary to do all that is necessary to carry out this adjudicatory power. This includes mandating payment from the State Treasury when such payment is essen*625tial for the judiciary to function and when those in the executive and legislative branches have failed their constitutional duty to provide services necessary to carry out the judicial function.
While we believe the facts of this case are more critical to its determination than any judicial philosophy, we must also acknowledge that the integrity of the judiciary as one of the three coequal branches of our government lies at the heart of the matter. For it is the independence of the judiciary that empowered Judge Morgan to appoint appellants and order they be paid.
In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), the United States Supreme Court located in the U.S. Constitution a mandate that those accused of crimes be provided counsel. Nine years later, in Bradshaw v. Ball, supra, we concluded that the Kentucky Constitution likewise requires that counsel for indigent criminal defendants be compensated for their representation. Despite finding the system of court-appointed, uncompensated counsel an unconstitutional deprivation of property, we reversed the court’s payment of fees. But Bradshaw v. Ball was decided “[i]n the context presented,” and critical to that “context” was the court’s finding that “the Kentucky Public Defender Act of 1972 appears to provide means adequate to observe the required standards, if that act is properly construed, administered, and,promptly put into operar tion.” 487 S.W.2d at 299. (Emphasis added). In this case the coequal branches of government failed to carry out these necessary contingencies expressed in Bradshaw v. Ball. Implicitly, the trial court has so found and the record supports such a finding. The judiciary then must exercise its inherent power as necessary to carry out its “reason for existence,” its assigned function “to adjudicate” (Bradshaw v. Ball, as quoted, supra). Under Bradshaw v. Ball the attorneys then appointed must be paid a reasonable fee for their services, since otherwise “the burden of such service [is] a substantial deprivation of property and constitutionally infirm.” Id., at 298.
The majority in this case implies that the separation of powers doctrine requires us to abdicate wholly to the legislature in the appointment and payment of counsel for accused indigents. In fact, the separation doctrine requires the opposite: it demands that the judiciary maintain the coequal status conferred by Section 109 of the Kentucky Constitution by protecting its inherent powers from the interference of the executive and legislative departments. In Smothers v. Lewis, Ky., 672 S.W.2d 62 (1984), this court repeated the “well settled law in the state ... that one branch of Kentucky’s tripartite government may not encroach upon the inherent powers granted to any other branch.” Id. at 64. In declaring unconstitutional a statute that forbade courts to enjoin revocation of liquor licenses during an appeal, we stated that “a court ... has, as an incident to its constitutional grant of power, inherent power to do all things reasonably necessary to the administration of justice in the case before it.” Id. The inability of the legislature, by enactment, to annul and supplant inherent judicial authority has repeatedly been stressed by this court. E.g., Commonwealth v. Furste, 288 Ky. 631, 157 S.W.2d 59 (1941); Craft v. Commonwealth, Ky., 343 S.W.2d 150 (1961). Accord Wells v. Gilliam, 196 F.Supp. 792 (E.D.Va.1961) (“In the administration of justice, the judge is charged with the preservation of order in his court and to see to it that justice is not obstructed by any person or persons whatever. Indeed, it is a power inherent in any court.”)
In recent years, many courts have construed as inherent in the constitutional grant of power to the judiciary the power both to appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants and to compel payment of their fees. See Young v. United States, 481 U.S. 787, 107 S.Ct. 2124, 95 L.Ed.2d 740 (1987) (to vindicate their authority, courts have inherent authority to appoint counsel to prosecute contempt actions); Annot., 59 A.L.R.3rd 569 (1980 & Supp.1993) (collecting cases on the inherent power of courts to compel expenditure of funds for judicial purposes). Many courts have determined that the inherent power of the judiciary to ensure the orderly administration of justice permits them not *626only to appoint counsel for accused paupers, but also to direct their fees be paid by a governmental entity and to award a fee in excess of statutory limits. See, e.g., Knox County Council v. State, 217 Ind. 493, 29 N.E.2d 405 (1940) (to carry out “purpose of their creation,” courts may appoint counsel and order county to compensate them); People v. Randolph, 35 Ill.2d 24, 219 N.E.2d 337 (1966) (court may order payment of counsel as necessary incident of inherent power to appoint and payment may exceed statutory maximum); State v. Lehman, 137 Wis.2d 65, 403 N.W.2d 438 (1987) (court had inherent power to appoint counsel when public defender refused assistance and to order payment of fee by county as court operating expense); Board v. Curry, 545 So.2d 930 (Fla.1989) (attorney’s fee in excess of statutory maximum was authorized by judiciary’s inherent power to ensure adequate representation for indigent criminal defendants).
There is much to deplore and much with which to sympathize in the situation that confronted Knott Circuit Judge Morgan in December of 1988. Clawvem Jacobs, accused of capital murder, had been jailed in September of 1986. He was not indicted, however, until some eight months later, in May of 1987. Prior to the indictment, two assistant public advocates had undertaken to represent Jacobs. When they moved for a competency hearing, in July of 1987, he requested their discharge. After the hearing, in October of 1987, Judge Morgan declared Jacobs incompetent to stand trial. He did not entertain Jacobs’ request to discharge his counsel until a year later, after evaluations and subsequent hearings convinced the judge of Jacobs’ competency, and a trial had been set for November 21, 1988.
At a pretrial conference on October 21, 1988, Judge Morgan took up Jacobs’ request to discharge his defense attorneys, which had been reiterated by Jacobs in court at the final competency hearing in August of 1988. A few days later, he ordered the DPA to appoint new counsel within ten days. When, over a month later, substitute counsel had not been assigned, the prosecution moved for a show cause order. At the same time, one of Jacobs’ defense attorneys sought to have the order removing him set aside. Further, at the show cause hearing, on December 13, 1988, the DPA showed opposition to the removal of the attorney whose discharge Jacobs had demanded and filed an affidavit demonstrating the difficulty of obtaining replacement counsel from within the Department.
No wonder Judge Morgan took the matter into his own hands by appointing counsel for Jacobs and prescribing how and by whom they would be paid. Jacobs had been incarcerated for over two years and had, finally, after a year, been found competent to stand trial. Jacobs denounced the DPA lawyers as having “pled [him] insane” against his wishes and tape recorded him without his knowledge. Moreover, Jacobs asked his lawyers to “file a motion for a speedy trial,” and they did not. Such a motion, if filed, required Jacobs to be brought to trial within 180 days. KRS 500.110. The finding of competency gave the court little choice but to respect Jacobs’ demand that his prior counsel withdraw. A trial was scheduled, so expedition was obviously required in the appointment of substitute counsel. Nevertheless, the court’s order requiring the DPA to act with haste was at first ignored and then met with a somewhat peculiar resistance that must have appeared to Judge Morgan to amount to a refusal to act. Not only did the DPA oppose the removal of Jacobs’ prior DPA-provided counsel, but it also hinted strongly that it would be unable to find a replacement for him due to personnel problems.
Judge Morgan was left with no choice but to exercise his inherent power as a judicial officer to ensure the orderly administration of justice in his court, both for Jacobs and for the citizens of the Commonwealth whose peace and dignity Jacobs was accused of having disrupted. The Judge’s authority to do as he did is a natural incident to the powers vested in the Court of Justice by Section 109 of the Kentucky Constitution. This authority exists regardless of the enactment of Chapter 31 creating the DPA and is *627not displaced by it. Moreover, the inherent power to appoint counsel must carry with it the obligation to direct meaningful payment for appointed counsel’s services. Otherwise, the requirement of Bradshaw, that an indigent accused be provided an attorney whose service does not deprive that attorney of his property without just compensation, remains unfulfilled.
Finally, in directing that appellant’s attorney fees be paid Judge Morgan did not, as the majority implies, arrogate to himself the legislative function of appropriating funds to enforce the laws. The appropriation had already been made by the legislature in funds budgeted to the DPA. Judge Morgan merely ordered payment from funds already earmarked by the executive and legislative branches for the purpose for which Judge Morgan directed they be paid: representation of indigent criminal defendants. The fact the fees exceeded the statutory cap does not render the judge’s order a controversion of the separation of powers. He wielded a power possessed by all trial judges that exists apart from Chapter 31, but which remains dormant so long as the DPA properly performs its statutory duties. Judge Morgan’s inherent authority was activated when the DPA did not promptly take steps to comply with Jacobs’ request and obtain other counsel for him once he was deemed competent and a trial scheduled. We would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand the case to the Knott Circuit Court for enforcement of its order directing payment to appellants of the fees requested by them.