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73: How a Sixth Amendment Center Report Sparked Change in Utah Public Defense w/Richard Mauro
73: How a Sixth Amendment Center Report Sparked Change in Utah Public Defense w/Richard Mauro
ratings:
Length:
65 minutes
Released:
Dec 7, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Today, Hunter spoke with Richard Mauro, Executive Director of the Salt Lake City Legal Defender Association, to talk all things Utah Public Defense. Not even a decade ago, Utah and Pennsylvania stood as the last two states who provided exactly zero dollars towards Public Defense. As expected, this created a patchwork system in the state that left places like Utah and Salt Lake County able to afford full time public defense offices while the more rural areas of the state were forced to rely on the cheapest flat rate contract imaginable. As a result of these flat rate contracts, a culture of met and plea arose. Surprisingly, it was the absence of appeals, despite countless stories of ineffective assistance of counsel, that drove people to start evaluating Public Defense in Utah. As alarm bells started going off, the Sixth Amendment Center’s 2015 report made even more issues come to light. By the end of this episode, you will have a clear understanding of what has gone right, wrong, and what sparked the change in Utah Public Defense. Guest: Richard Mauro, Executive Director, Salt Lake City Legal Defender Association Key Topics: How Richard got into Public Defense [5:30] Differences in Federal Public Defense and Utah’s Public Defense [6:54] Utah Public Defense Before Sixth Amendment Center [8:51] How did the lack of Appeals show issues with Utah PD [11:30] Major findings of the 6AC Report [14:12] How the politics of SLC help Public Defense [18:00] What calculus went into the structure of Utah Public Defense? [22:50] How does the structure of Utah politics help Public Defense? [26:18] How does the Utah Public Defense grant system work? [29:03] Keeping the grant money coming [31:55] Long term goals of the system [38:45] Salt Lake City Public Defense successes and challenges [42:57] Resources: SLDA Website https://www.sllda.com/ Sixth Amendment Center Report https://sixthamendment.org/6ac/6AC_utahreport.pdf Utah Indigent Defense Commission https://idc.utah.gov/ Contact Hunter Parnell: hwparnell@publicdefenseless.com Instagram @PublicDefenselessPodcast Twitter @PDefenselessPod www.publicdefenseless.com
Released:
Dec 7, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
05: What's Causing the Crisis in Maine's Public Defense System w/Justin Andrus: Meet Justin Andrus: Executive Director of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services. In this week’s episode, I speak with Justin about how he is massively improving the indigent defense system in the state of Maine. Maine... by Public Defenseless