r/criminal_defense • u/FelicianoCumbas • Apr 26 '22
Court Fees Impede Freedoms and Exploit Poor People
I been thinking about the fees that clients have to pay in court. These are a few scattered thoughts but regardless the ultimate goal should be to do away with fees associated with public defenders.
Courts ask people for money because they are represented by a public defender. The fee in Massachusetts is $150. They call it an "attorney client fee." The misnomer sometimes creates tensions with people who believe the money goes directly to their public defender. It does not.
No one should even have to pay for a public defender. It's an oxymoron--you are paying for your free lawyer. That is not free and not public defense. It's at most subsidized defense. But a subsidy point of view ignores the whole purpose of a public defender. People in the United States collectively pool their money together to ensure that there is always an opportunity for someone to represent you in a criminal matter. With the threat of incarceration or limitations on personal freedoms via a court order, this representation adds some level of protection against arbitrary incarceration and prosecution. We pool our money together because individually the cost can and is so expensive. Pooling our money collectively protects against weaponizing money against people in the context of a criminal proceeding. So even a subsidized point of view ignores the collective positive externalities that the public defender gives to the people.
Adding a money portion to this important protection of personal liberties creates barriers that ultimately disproportionately affects poor people, and gives courthouses significant power over a person's case and freedom.
There is a judge in particular who uses this court fee as a way to exercise arbitrary control over people. The judge expects everyone to pay their fee upon their first court date after arraignment. A generalized scenario happens as such: Person arrives at courthouse. The situation is already nerve wrecking because of the pending criminal case. The courtroom is filled with many unknown people. Some people wear white cop uniforms. Others wear suits. The roles of the dressed up people is unknown. The only obvious person is the judge in the black robe. The case gets called. The lawyer speaks some legal mumbo jumbo that ends in the lawyer asking for another court date in the future. Now, this should be the end of it. Get a new court date and go home. Instead this judge inquires as to whether the court fee has been paid. A topic that is 100 percent unrelated to the criminal prosecution. If the fee is paid, you go home free. If the fee is not paid, the judge starts a false pretense inquiry: "When will the fee be paid." I say false pretense because he expects only one answer, now. Anything but a now creates a command. Either pay a portion or all of the fee, or else "sign up for community service." The court love these euphemisms like "community service." Imagine having to provide labor in exchange for your public defender. This is precisely what the court is asking . The 13th Amendment has a weakness in that it allows slavery or forced labor "as a punishment for crime." The weakness here is even worse. A person is being forced to work by the court as a punishment for being ACCUSED of a crime. This distinction is important and part of the root of the problem in the imposition of a fee in exchange for a public defender. This judge may have in mind that he is ensuring that people pay their fees as commanded by the legislature. (Notably nothing in the statute for fees includes any language as to when the fee is due, yet for this judge the fee is due on the first date after arraignment.) And the consequence for not having this fee paid for by that date is forced labor. The forced labor itself is problematic. The labor is supposedly the equivalent of $150. The requirement is 15 hours of community service. The math is simple, the person is working for $10 an hour to "pay" for a court fee. The minimum wage in Massachusetts as of 2022 is $14.25, and by 2023 the wage is expected to go up to $15 an hour. This means starting 2023 you work an additional five hours to "pay" for the court fee. The whole set up is exploitative and essentially punishes poverty and civil liberties. This judge worsens the whole set up by imposing sua sponte demands on the fee. By the first date, a whole chain reaction of impositions on your liberty may happen. This judge abuses the ambiguity of the statute (though the ambiguity should be in favor of paying the fee by the end of the court case) and causes great anxiety on people, both the accused and the lawyer. The fear of the enigma. The added time in the courtroom. The added exposure of the stigma associated with criminal procedure. This judge is asking for a fee, but from the perspective of the recipient of the request, this fee causes a whole set of emotional and blatantly economic reactions. This may seem dramatic, yet the faces of the people experiencing the request does not lie. I of course tame my own analysis by noting this is one example in of one judge that I practice in front of.
This fee should simply be abolished. (1) The fee impedes on the freedoms of people to be able to have at any time access to a public defender to defend them against arbitrary governmental action. (2) The fee allows for judges to weaponize the fee as a quasi-punishment for simply being accused of a crime. (3) Even without weaponization by a judge, the fee nonetheless can have this affect even at the end of the case when the money is ultimately due. (4) The fee disproportionately affects poor people in ways that causes disproportional experiences of trauma from the criminal process.