Chaos in court: Massachusetts lawyers’ strike frees alleged drug dealers and abusers

Four individuals with charges including drug distribution and domestic abuse were released from jail in Boston due to a six-week “work stoppage” by court-appointed public defenders, CBS reported.

Eighteen more defendants are slated for release hearings on July 9, CBS reported. They face accusations including fentanyl trafficking, assault, and battery.

Boston lawyers and other attorneys statewide, engaged in a strike on public defense, have left courts woefully understaffed, with 587 immediately impacted defendants uncertain as to the progress of their cases, an order from a Massachusetts Associate Justice dated July 3 shows. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court enacted the “Lavallee Protocol,” in which a court is required to dismiss defendants if they have not had an attorney for more than seven days. This led to the release of four defendants on Monday, with charges including drug distribution and domestic abuse, CBS reported.

Full-time public defenders cover about 20% of defense cases, CBS reported. The other 80% are represented by “bar advocates”— private attorneys who step out of their typical work in the private sector to represent defendants who cannot afford private defense.

Massachusetts’ court-appointed public defense attorneys are paid $65 an hour in District Courts, a rate that pales in comparison to neighboring states, according to CBS. New Hampshire offers $125, Maine $150, and Rhode Island $112 per hour. The compensation stands in stark contrast to the over $300 an hour that private defense attorneys can command.

Massachusetts Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt implemented the Lavallee Protocol on July 3rd, warning in the order that hundreds of defendants would go without representation by the end of the month.

“[The strike] will likely continue for the foreseeable future because there are at present no apparent prospects for a significant remediation of the problem,” Wendlandt said in the order. “There is no information before the court regarding any expected end to the work stoppage.”

Regardless of the merit of the lawyers’ claim for a pay hike, the strike has brought Boston criminal proceedings to a slow crawl.

“It’s very irresponsible. It’s selfish and it’s greedy,” said John Carmichael, a former Massachusetts police chief. “You have drug dealers and domestic abusers and whatever else that might be walking out the door. You don’t know what their criminal history is—that affects public safety overall.

“You don’t just get to not come to work, because the whole system breaks down,” he added. “The police officers are out in the street doing their job, the judges, the court officers, the prosecutors…We don’t get to walk out the door because we aren’t getting paid enough.”

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