Private lawyers are ordered to represent indigent defendants

Judges in Hampden County have begun ordering private defense lawyers to represent indigent clients to ease a shortage of attorneys as a result of a fierce pay dispute.

Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney ordered several lawyers to take cases yesterday, according to Anthony Bonavita, president of the Hampden County Bar Advocates, a group of about 120 lawyers that has a contract with the state public defender agency to represent poor criminal defendants.

In addition, William W. Teahan Jr., the chief administrative judge for the five district courts in the county, said in a letter to Bonavita that he will soon begin assigning lawyers to cases to ease the crisis.

''The attorneys' consent is not sought under present emergency circumstances," he wrote.

Citing the state Supreme Judicial Court's rules of professional conduct, Teahan said that lawyers must take appointments except for ''good cause."

Exceptions include cases that would probably result in a violation of the law or court rules, that would pose an ''unreasonable financial burden" on the lawyer, or that would be repugnant to the lawyer.

Anthony J. Benedetti, general counsel for the state Committee for Public Counsel Services, the public defender agency, said Teahan's order ''really doesn't change anything."

The reason lawyers have refused to take cases, he said, is because current pay rates have created a financial burden.

In response to lawsuits filed over pay rates, the SJC ruled recently that defendants cannot be jailed for more than seven days without a lawyer and that charges must be dropped against defendants if they had no lawyer after 45 days.

After the ruling, a Hampden County judge this week released on bail three defendants facing drug charges, resulting in an outcry from Governor Mitt Romney, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, and local law enforcement officials.

Romney filed a bill with the Democrat-controlled Legislature Wednesday that would give him oversight of the committee, which manages the roughly 2,500 private lawyers statewide who represent indigent defendants.

He said he would force lawyers to choose between accepting new cases at rates recently hiked by lawmakers or being permanently banned from doing such work in Massachusetts.

Later that day, the Republican governor held an hourlong meeting with William J. Leahy, chief counsel for the committee, former attorney general Robert Quinn, and other officials from the committee. The governor vowed to hold another meeting next week to negotiate further.

Reilly, widely believed to be a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2006, met yesterday for about 90 minutes with about 20 members of lawyers' groups, private defense attorneys, and prosecutors from around the state.

The meeting reached no resolution, but Reilly said it was productive. He also repeated earlier criticism of Romney's bill, calling it ''counterproductive."

The Legislature recently approved a $7.50 hourly increase in the rate paid private lawyers who defend the poor, but it has yet to fund it, at a cost of about $20 million a year.

Even with the increase, the pay scale -- $37.50 to $61.50 an hour, depending on the seriousness of the cases -- would still rank among the lowest in the country, according to the Spangenberg Group, a West Newton consulting firm.