by Jim Karshner
May 16, 2008

Eddie Joe Lloyd
Photo courtesy of
State Bar of Michigan

It took a 1985 jury less than an hour to find Eddie Joe Lloyd of Detroit guilty of the brutal rape and murder of a 16-year-old honor student. The judge decried the lack of a death penalty when he sentenced him to life in prison.

Lloyd spent more than 17 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. He was exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence proved his innocence.

It was a case that captured national attention. Barry Scheck, best known for his role as DNA expert on O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team,” was Lloyd’s lawyer. “DNA helps identify the guilty. It helps exonerate the innocent,” explains Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project that works to free the wrongfully convicted.

Lloyd died at the age of 54, just two years after his release. In 2006 his estate settled with the City of Detroit, Wayne County and State of Michigan for approximately $4 million “for failing to provide adequate representation” to Lloyd when he was charged with raping and murdering Michelle Jackson. The $4-million settlement was a costly addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent over 17 years to incarcerate Lloyd. And these figures don’t include the amount spent in prosecution of the case and defense of the appeal, or the cost of the habeas and civil lawsuits.

Michelle Jackson’s real killer has never been found.

A more recent Innocence Project case of wrongful conviction involved Ken Wyniemko of Clinton Township. Wyniemko spent nearly nine years behind bars for breaking and entering, armed robbery and rape before being cleared in 2003 by DNA evidence. He received a $3.7-million settlement from Clinton Township and its police department. Wyniemko has offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the real rapist who is still at large.

The Eddie Joe Lloyd and Ken Wyniemko stories are tragedies that put the reliability of Michigan’s justice system in serious doubt. In response to these stories, scrutiny is being aimed at the way public defense is provided in Michigan.

Under the U.S. Constitution, defendants are guaranteed the right to a lawyer in a criminal case even if they cannot afford one. The landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright established that right, but 45 years after the Gideon decision, several states are still failing to protect the rights of its poorest defendants, according to a number of recent national studies.

Although Michigan was one of the first states to require appointment of counsel as early as 1857, that obligation was passed onto the counties, where it has remained for more than 150 years with little or no change. Michigan is one of only a handful of states in the nation that provides no support for or oversight of trial-level indigent defense services.

“Michigan’s 83 counties have 83 different public defense systems with 83 different levels of funding,” points out Laura Sager, director of the Michigan Campaign for Justice, a new, broad-based coalition established to fix Michigan’s public defense system through legislative action. “Our public defense system is ineffective and wasteful…it does not deliver the public safety or fairness taxpayers should expect.”

Supporters of reform assert that the county-based system leads to costly errors and wrongful convictions because the current system fails to equip attorneys with the necessary tools to ensure that justice does not go awry. Court-appointed attorneys are overworked and rarely receive the resources to effectively do their jobs, including hiring experts or investigators. Many attorneys do not have access to essential training, reformers say.

Such claims would mean that Michigan falls far short of “The Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System,” which were developed six years ago by the American Bar Association as a practical guide for government officials and policymakers (see www.abaorg.net). The Ten Principles have become the national standards by which public defense systems are judged, and they are used to create new or improve existing systems by which public defense services are delivered.

Elizabeth Lyon, director of governmental affairs for the State Bar of Michigan (left), and Laura Sager, director of the Michigan Campaign for Justice, discuss the problem of inadequate public defense at a recent State Bar program.

Two years ago, concerns about Michigan’s public defense system captured the attention of Michigan’s legislature. Through Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 39 of 2006, the legislature called for the State Bar of Michigan and National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) to collect information and issue a report on the costs of indigent criminal cases, the number of criminal cases assigned to court-appointed attorneys and the type of criminal cases that receive court-appointed attorneys.

The study, currently being conducted by NLADA, is scheduled for release in June of this year. An independent advisory group of stakeholders selected 10 counties (Alpena, Bay, Chippewa, Grand Traverse, Jackson, Marquette, Oakland, Ottawa, Shiawassee and Wayne) to be examined and evaluated by NLADA site teams. Those evaluations form the basis for the soon-to-be-released study.

Preliminary findings from the study appear to justify the concerns about public defense in Michigan. “In northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, we found too few lawyers handling too many cases in almost every criminal court jurisdiction,” says author David Carroll, NLADA’s director of research and evaluation. “In the urban areas, especially in district courts, one of the main problems is the over-emphasis on speed over fairness…it went beyond assembly-line justice.”

Carroll and his team recently have been active in reform efforts in Louisiana, Nevada and Montana. Their strategic plan in post-Katrina New Orleans became the basis for the Louisiana Public Defender Act of 2007 that created a statewide indigent defense commission with regulatory authority to set and enforce binding standards related to workload, attorney performance, client contact and attorney qualifications.

Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, who co-sponsored the resolution and was once a public defense lawyer in Clinton County, sees an uphill battle for a system overhaul in Michigan.

“I hope the report can lay the groundwork for the need for change, but until public attitudes change, the need will not be met,” Cropsey says. “It’s not a high priority in the legislature, especially given our state’s rough financial condition.”

Carroll agrees that the political will is not strong in Michigan today, but he’s confident that the report will start a public dialogue.

“I don’t think the legislators truly understand the depth of the problem,” he explains. “It’s more than a public safety issue — it’s their constitutional obligation.”

Other national figures have suggested that a budget crisis might be a good reason to examine public defense and the dollars that inadequate systems consume.

“Poor public defense systems are inefficient and waste tax payer dollars,” said Malia Brink of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “They result in more appeals, more unnecessary prison expenditures and more money needed for settlements with exonerees.”

Jim Karshner is founder and president of Above the Fold, a Lansing-area public relations firm that does work with the State Bar of Michigan.