AGS FOR THE DEFENSE

Roanoke Times Editorial
Sunday, April 16, 2006

Virginia House and Senate members aren't listening to each other in their special session to find a compromise on transportation funding that will yield a state budget. The lawmakers had best be more attentive to advice from their attorneys on another budget matter: paying to defend the poor.

Actually, the advice comes from former Virginia attorneys general -- 11 of them, from both political parties. They have written a letter to the budget committees of both houses, urging them to allot enough money to reform Virginia's notorious system of caps on court-appointed attorneys' fees and to provide indigent defendants with good legal representation.

If legislators don't, a federal class-action lawsuit is waiting in the wings.

If lawyers file that suit, they will be able to cite as evidence the admonition of the state's own former attorneys general, who wrote: "Virginia's mandatory fee caps do not provide a fair opportunity to many indigent defendants to present their case to the trier of fact."

And that opportunity is a right guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.