For kids accused of crime, a risk of unskilled lawyers

Youth accused of crimes in Caddo Parish are too often assigned attorneys with no pay, no criminal law experience and little grasp of the intricacies of juvenile defense, according to some juvenile justice professionals.

The system of appointing this type of private attorney for child offenders — which happens in around half of the 50-100 cases a year that pose a conflict of interest for a juvenile public defender — has been in place long before Caddo’s public defender office enacted a restriction of services this month.

Critics say it erodes young people’s respect for law and the courts.

“There is a very high risk that a child will … basically get convinced to take a plea when they probably shouldn’t,” said Caddo juvenile services director Clay Walker.

“Kids can out-spite adults,” he said. “If they think they’re being treated unfairly, they will shut down and do a year in jail and learn nothing from it. If they feel like they’re treated fairly, if they feel like they’re heard, they’re more likely to accept their punishment and learn from it.”

Caddo juvenile Judge Shonda Stone lamented the system that compels her to appoint lawyers to conflict cases in her court. She said she has no choice but to select whomever is next on an alphabetical list of area attorneys of all practice areas.

If a serious case arises — involving murder or armed robbery, for example — Stone said she cannot cherry-pick a more experienced criminal law attorney to represent that client.

“Juvenile law is a specialty,” Stone said. “The problem is when we appoint private counsel, a lot of them do not have juvenile experience.” She added it’s not a matter of a lawyer’s talent or dedication, but of his or her skill set.

Caddo Parish has the state’s highest-volume juvenile court, at least as of 2013. That year, 3,225 children came through Caddo’s court, versus 2,689 in Jefferson Parish, 2,610 in East Baton Rouge Parish and 1,518 in Orleans Parish, according to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s annual report. Only those four Louisiana parishes have juvenile justice complexes.

That Caddo is also the only one of the four to not have a juvenile conflict panel — a group of paid, experienced lawyers who can take on cases posing conflicts, such as a crime with multiple offenders — worries Josh Perry, executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights.

“The problem with not having a conflicts panel that is selected by public defenders … is that you have these lawyers out there who are essentially doing the work as a favor to the judge. And what that can result in is lawyers who are not motivated to push back in every way that lawyers have to push back to be effective servants of their clients,” he said.

Caddo District Attorney Charles Scott doesn’t think it’s a problem some juveniles are represented by lawyers without a criminal law background.

“Whatever system it is that the judges are using has worked, to the best of my knowledge. I’m not aware of any problems of persons complaining that they were not adequately represented by counsel at juvenile court,” he said.

But the difficulties can be hard to pinpoint, Walker said. Often they come in the form of lost opportunities, he said.

“We have roughly 143 programs that we work with as alternatives to detention,” Walker said. They include anger management, academic tutoring and counseling. But, he said, “if you don’t know juvenile (law), then you don’t know to even look for those 143 programs.”

Chris Broughton, a Shreveport attorney, knows the challenge of being randomly selected to work on a juvenile criminal case. A former insurance lawyer, Broughton had no criminal law training when he was called to advocate for a minor in Caddo juvenile court around 2008.

“It was, I don’t want to say scary, but … it was a little nerve-wracking. There was no help available, really,” he said.

Now a personal injury and criminal defense lawyer, Broughton said not having the proper expertise had “the chance to be really detrimental.”

Perry noted the potential damage done to young people when they sense their lawyers don’t know what they’re doing in fulfilling a Constitutional right to counsel.

“If you stand there in court and you don’t understand what’s happening to you, and you don’t feel like there is anybody on your side, and there’s this conspiracy of adults in the room who are talking a language that you don’t really understand, you feel that you are outside of this justice system, and what the justice system does is not really about you and not really for you,” he said.

“And if what happens is kids come away from court feeling that their rights are not respected, how are we going to ask them to learn to grow up in a way where they do respect the rights of other people?”

Twitter: @mayalau