WaPo: ““Anna slowed down the machine,” says attorney Charlie Gerstein. “And this is what happens to you when you slow down the machine.”
Gerstein is speaking about his client Anna Harris, the founder of JUST-US, a group that works with indigent defendants in Texas. Harris and another organization called the Texas Jail Project aim to provide a more robust and complete public defense — assistance not just with the charges themselves but also with the cascading consequences of an arrest and prosecution. What Harris didn’t anticipate is that her work would lead to her own arrest.
She was apprehended in Victoria, a town of about 67,000 in southeastern Texas. “Part of what I do is court watching,” Harris says. “I sit in a courtroom and take notes on what happens.” Most of the time courtrooms are open to the public. But some judges “in more rural areas … aren’t used to seeing unfamiliar faces.”
Harris says when she starts working in a new county, she typically introduces herself to the chief public defender (where there is one). She’ll then reach out to indigent defendants, informing them of diversion programs for drug addiction or mental health, and the availability of expert witnesses, and offering to write letters on their behalf. She’ll sometimes serve as a conduit between a defendant and his or her family.
While this “holistic” model of public defense has become popular in some larger cities (and early studies suggest it reduces incarceration without any accompanying harm), in many parts of the country judges still refer indigent cases to attorneys in private practice. Critics say this system can create a sort of assembly-line justice, because attorneys who get clients to accept plea bargains tend to get more referrals. Attorneys who slow down the courts with a vigorous defense risk future referrals.
Harris’s group tries to provide services referral attorneys can’t — or won’t. Sometimes her help is welcomed. But often it isn’t.”