14 comments

  1. crittermom

    Yes! Absolutely delicious.
    I don’t know or care if Mr. Barrett is a Republican or Democrat, but I like the way he dealt with the problem.
    Too bad he can’t throw his hat in the ring this election. Seems like just the kind of straight forward in-your-face solution that’s needed throughout this country. I think he’d have my vote!

    1. crittermom

      I just went one step further by writing Mr. Barrett, applauding his solution.
      We need more like him who say “Enough is enough” & shove it back on those who created the problem.

      1. Jerry

        I wrote him, too. His address is at the bottom of the letter he sent the Governor, which is the opening link to this post.

  2. herman_sampson

    now if we could use the governer’s mansion (here in Indiana) as a homeless shelter or at least a soup kitchen; mayor’s yards as community gardens and city-council members as chauffeurs (since bus service is inadequat). the possibilities are endless.

  3. david lamy

    I spent my formative years in Kansas City, Missouri.
    My memories of Jay Nixon’s and Claire McCaskill’s early political careers still linger. What a dissapointing difference 30 years can make!
    Hopefully, Jerimiah Nixon, Esquire will be dispatched to the boot heel to help alleviate the damage he has inflicted upon Missouri’s indigent.
    As an aside, the unfortunate evolution of the younger Ms McCaskill I had several conversations with in a mutual acquaintances kitchen almost beggar belief that this Senator McCaskill is the same person.

  4. Eduardo Quince

    A logical next move for Mr. Barrett would be to likewise delegate cases to all criminal defense lawyers who have contributed money to Jay Nixon’s campaigns

  5. Bob

    I worked for the MSPD for over eight years, and I was successful at my job despite any alleged shortfalls in funding. If anything, the trial offices were taken hostage by the central office is efforts to coerce additional funding. MSPD is not a well-managed organization. If the managers had spent a n-th of the time educating the state house and senate as to the value of the organization as they spend on grandstanding and lawsuits, it might not be in the dire straits they claim. And if Mr. Barrett is so convinced that the governor can be pulled away from his official duties to take criminal cases, then perhaps Mr. Barrett and his executive staff could be likewise convinced to walk away from their own desk jobs to take cases as well.

    What they apparently are utterly incapable of doing is lobbying the legislature to overturn the governor’s withholding of new appropriations (in light of declining revenue projections) pursuant to his constitutional powers. They have burnt many bridges with the governor, legislature, and even the judiciary in rather immature efforts to raise their funding level. What they risk is a general assembly willing to abolish the agency and return management of indigent defense to the local judicial circuits.

    Indigent criminal defense is never going to be a popular budget item ever, but more mature efforts can be made to inform both the public and state officials.

    1. PhilU

      Nixon (D) is a good start but everything really deserves to be bipartisan. Especially since I’m sure the State Senate (23R : 9D) and House (116R : 45D) are probably just as culpable. [Holy shit that is gerrymandered, Obama was 0.15% shy of taking MO in 2008]

  6. JTMcPhee

    I’m wondering which eight years of successful job experience as a public defender (recent, subject to the existing “budgetary constraints”?) are grounding the suggestion that the MSPB senior staff needs to “just grow up and play the game.”

    Also, how many hours and how many brown-envelope dollars does Mr. Barrett have to try to schmooze a patently “welfare-“hostile legislature and executive into allocating more funds to that “unpopular budget item,” when there are tax breaks and subsidies and other more “popular” budget items so far ahead in the neoliberal priorities list.

    “Politics is the art of the possible,” I hear. Don’t take a plea for mercy to a knife fight…

  7. JTMcPhee

    http://jim.willingham.com/worthles.htm

    Coming soon to a district or circuit court near you: “Motion to Destroy Worthless Person.” De facto, death by cop already effectuates the notion, so who needs de jure?

    This bit of jocularity was pretty widely circulated in both civil and criminal contexts when I was an attorney working in Chicago. Fred Hampton? Mark Clark?

  8. Heath Siwek

    In turn, it said, the state’s prison population has become “artificially” inflated under Nixon, with the state department of corrections’ budget increased by $. Louisiana’s public defender system has also attempted to call attention to budget issues. It said last winter it could not take on new cases due to a lack of resources; in January it began refusing cases . A judge later released about a half-dozen prisoners, saying the public defender system lacked adequate funding to represent them .

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