MAINE'S JUSTICE SYSTEM IS 'FAILING,' CHIEF JUDGE SAYS, BUT DEMOCRAT GOV. BLOCKS FIX
FORMER PROSECUTOR JANET MILLS IS POSING AS A PROGRESSIVE WHILE OVERSEEING 'LITTLE MISSISSIPPI' CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM OF CHRONICALLY UNDERFUNDED COURTS AND INDIGENT DEFENSE
Maine Gov. Janet Mills sporting a shiny retro-haircut during a gubernatorial debate in 2022.. Photo Credit: Screengrab via C-Span.
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Maine's criminal justice and court systems are collapsing, but Maine's Democratic Governor is blocking a fix.
"Our justice system is failing," Valerie Stanfill, Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court, told Maine Public Radio last December. "It's not only not getting better, it may be getting worse."
"I used to call Maine 'Little Mississippi' because our justice system is so broken," former Maine House of Representative member Jeffrey Evangelos told The Free Lance. "That's an insult to Mississippi now," he explained. "They're taking measures on criminal justice reform. Maine has done nothing to fix any of the inequities."
Evangelos was a representative for 10 years. He served six years on the bi-cameral legislature's joint judiciary committee, before leaving in frustration in 2022.
"We tried to reform it but met resistance from top-level Democrats. From the Governor down to the Attorney General Aaron Frey, whose office routinely obstructs justice," Evangelos alleged.
Danna Hayes, spokesperson for Attorney General Frey, did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Maine’s first female Governor, Democrat Janet Mills, and leaders in the Democrat-controlled state legislature, are ignoring the magnitude of a multi-faceted court crisis that extends far beyond the fairness of the system even as its supposed to operate.
Mills' Democratic credentials include questioning former President Donald Trump's sanity, supporting expanded access to abortion, preaching LGBTQ Pride, fighting climate change and supporting migrants. But, other than expanding drug treatment in her state's prisons, the former prosecutor-turned-politician has blocked reform of Maine's criminal justice system.
Mills "is by far the biggest impediment to any meaningful (or even nominal) criminal legal reform in the State of Maine," Tina Nadeau, a Maine criminal defense attorney, says.
"As always you can predict her vetoes by imagining a democratic prosecutor in rural Maine in 1984," another lawyer whose work includes civil rights, Andy Schmidt, agreed.
Nadeau and Schmidt were reacting to Mills' veto of a bill that would have made bail easier for people accused of crimes to get and keep. Mills called the bill "unrealistic and unacceptable," in her veto letter. It was the second time Mills vetoed reform of Maine's bail law.
Mills has also vetoed bills that would have decriminalized prostitution, reigned in pretextual traffic stops by cops, stopped prosecuting juveniles for consensual sex with other juveniles, limited the criminal prosecution of 18-25 year-olds, closed Maine's only juvenile prison and required recording witness interviews in criminal cases.
Ben Goodman, Gov. Mill's press secretary, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Evangelos, the former state representative, has an explanation.
“Gov. Mills is a former prosecutor and a former attorney general, and she doesn’t believe in criminal justice reform,” he said. “She's a Conservative Law and Order Democrat. She believes in ‘You do the crime, you do the time.’ There are no second chances.”
Some of the criminal justice reforms vetoed by Gov. Mills would have, if implemented, reduced the volume of cases currently clogging Maine's courts. Instead, the backlog exploded.
Valerie Stanfill, Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court, being sworn in by Gov. Janet Mills, June 17, 2021. Photo Credit: Maine Governor’s Office.
The current crisis has three components, according to Stanfill, Maine's Chief Justice. First, Maine's courts have been "chronically underfunded, for decades," she said in her December Maine Public Radio interview.
Second, and relatedly, Maine's program to provide lawyers to impoverished criminal defendants is "chronically underfunded" too. That, she said, diverts already scare judicial resources. For example, court clerks are forced to spend hours trying to find lawyers to represent criminal defendants instead of working to resolve cases.
Lastly, Government-mandated pandemic restrictions limited how many people could be in the courthouse at any one time, further slowing the flow of cases.
These factors combined to slow down the entire Maine court system so much that it created a five year backlog of criminal and civil cases. The backlog is forcing Maine judges to perform the judicial equivalent of medical triage. Criminal and child custody cases go first, Chief Judge Stanfill said. Everything else comes next. Ordinary civil cases are last.
One person listening to Chief Justice Stanfill's publicly broadcast December plea called in to report his experience. He said he was a litigant in a stalled civil case in Maine's courts.
"It really has become just crazy the level of dysfunction," Mike, the caller, said. "And all I can say is 'Justice delayed is justice denied.'"
Chief Justice Stanfill replied: "We are trying and trying and trying." But, quoting one of her law clerks, Stanfill likened Maine's court personnel to doomed passengers on a sinking ship.
"It's like everybody is bailing as fast as they can," she said, but "the water level keeps getting higher, in our boat."
Walter F. McKee, a prominent Maine criminal defense attorney, told the Portland Press Herald some of his cases are more than three years old and still waiting for a trial date. “The civil docket is even worse,” he said.
Barbara Cardone, Director of Legal Affairs and Public Relations for Maine's courts, confirmed an extraordinary backlog of criminal and civil cases currently before Maine's courts as of June 9.
"The backlog depends on where you are and what court you're in," Cardone explained. "Civil jury trial cases are really behind. I would say that's probably the area that has most lagged behind."
When asked for detailed data on the system-wide delays, Cardone said it would have to be compiled. She did say, however, that she had no reason to question McKee's anecdotal reporting.
McKee represents people who can afford to pay him. Most criminal defendants cannot afford to hire a lawyer. That means they likely get treated even worse than McKee's relatively privileged clients.
Unlike every single one of the other 49 states in America, Maine does not satisfy its Federal constitutional obligation to provide criminal defense lawyers to poor people by way of a public defender office. Instead, it relies on a system of independent contractors run by a state agency called the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services.
Last year, the Commission made a desperate plea for more funding to Gov. Mills and the Democrat-controlled state legislature. It fell on deaf ears. That caused the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Commission.
"Maine is not meeting its duty under the Constitution to provide low-income people accused of crimes with access to quality legal representation," Zachary Heiden, chief counsel at the ACLU of Maine, said in a press release.
The lawsuit is stalled in settlement talks. The court and the parties are waiting to see what, if anything, Gov. Mills and the state legislature do to address the court crisis this year.
Nothing, so far. Gov. Mills announced she'd reached a deal with the legislature to budget four more judges and an additional $15 million to hire more court support personnel, the Maine Monitor reported Mar. 23.
But lawmakers failed to include the new funds in the two-year budget enacted Mar. 29, Cardone, the Maine court spokesperson, confirmed.
Press representatives for the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Rachel Talbot Ross, and the Majority Leader of the Maine Senate, Eloise A. Vitelli, did not respond to a request for comment.
Maine’s criminal prosecutor-turned-politician Democrat Janet Mills co-leads a coalition of Progressive governors against climate change, including California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul. Photo credit: Screengrab via US Climate Allliance.
Maine currently budgets for 63 judges and 248 clerks, according to the latest Maine Judicial Branch Annual Report. The independent National Center for State Courts examined Maine's court system and found it needs 9 more judges and 53 more clerks for a total of 72 judges and 301 clerks.
Even then, that's just to build-up Maine's court system so that it can handle the new-normal caseload. It's not sufficient to clear the current backlog, the report explicitly cautioned.
"We need more positions just to keep up with the current caseload demand," Anna Quinlin, the Maine state court administrator, emphasized to lawmakers in April.
"I want to be clear,” Quinlin added, “that these new positions alone will not address the backlog for the next few years to come."
Cardone said Friday morning that even at current funding levels five of Maine’s 63 budgeted judgeships are vacant.
"Not only are we short on judgeships," she said, "our immediate concern is the vacancies. We need to get our vacancies filled."
Maine's court system can't fill judicial vacancies on its own. That process starts with Gov. Mills nominating a candidate followed by a hearing in the state legislature after which the nominee is confirmed or rejected. Currently, the state legislature is considering two prospective nominees by Gov. Mills.
A person familiar with ongoing, behind-the-scenes budget negotiations blamed Republicans for blocking a court fix by threatening to hold up approving Maine's entirely-separate highway budget if Democrats add money to the court budget.
"They do not want to grow state government. That's their big thing. They want to create tax cuts by starving state government," they said.
"What they're really doing," they added, is "screwing over every resident of Maine."
But the top Republican in the Maine House of Representatives, Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, denied Republicans stand in the way of fully funding Maine's courts.
"Republicans have advocated for more money for courts," Faulkingham told The Free Lance. "That's a constitutional obligation. Unlike all the other priorities Democrats had."
DISCLOSURE: The reporter is current suing the Maine Dep’t of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, in Federal court, for denying him a Maine outdoor guide license based on a 33-year-old felony conviction. 🔗 bit.ly/42aL6tK.
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