For today’s post, I conducted a short interview with Tom Maher, the executive director of the Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS), the statewide agency in North Carolina that oversees the provision of legal representation for indigent defendants in criminal and other cases. We talk about the recent raise in the rates for private assigned counsel doing high-level felony work, the status of public defense funding in North Carolina, and the importance of a robust system of indigent defense generally. Readers may be aware that I served as a private assigned counsel for many years before coming to work at the School of Government, and it’s a topic near and dear to me. Indigent defense is equally important for court actors and citizens of the state, and I hope you find the interview informative. It runs around 13 minutes, with minor edits for the sake of time and clarity. Click here to watch. Speaking of high-level felonies, we are in the process of planning a new training that will focus on defending serious felony cases. The idea behind the new course is to supplement the existing defender trainings with a focus on the most common, serious non-capital felonies. Among many other defender trainings, we hold programs for new misdemeanor and new felony defenders as well as a week-long trial school where attendees bring their own case and “try” out their trial skills. We hope that this advanced felony course will become a regular training program for attorneys handling or aspiring to [...]
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