Los Angeles Metropolitan News-Enterprise associate editor Robert Greene reports in an article titled “Suit Against County, Pubic Defender for Poor Defense Reinstated”. Excerpt:
A county public defender who established a policy of giving lie detector tests to every client and who allegedly assigned inexperienced lawyers to defend capital cases can be held liable under civil rights laws for denying defendants effective counsel, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.
Although the deputy public defender who took the client’s case to court cannot be held accountable for his actions under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, the court held, the county, and the county employee with administrative control over the office, can be.
…
Harris carried out a policy, which his lawyer said already was in place when he took the job, of giving a polygraph test to every client the office represented.
As interpreted by the majority opinion, Miranda’s allegation was that the results of the test dictated how seriously the Public Defender’s Office worked to represent its client. A client whose test results indicated innocence might be defended vigorously while one whose results showed guilt would receive only limited investigation and minimal defense, Miranda claimed.
Schroeder said Harris, who allocated state funds within the office, was acting on behalf of the county in making his decisions and thus qualified as a “state actor” under Sec. 1983.
While not reaching the question of whether Harris actually used the lie detectors to determine how to allocate his resources, the court said Miranda’s allegation about polygraphs was a sufficient claim of a governmental deliberate indifference to the requirement that every criminal defendant receive adequate representation.
“This is a core guarantee of the Sixth Amendment and a right so fundamental that any contrary policy erodes the principles of liberty and justice that underpin our civil rights,” Schroeder said.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling may be downloaded as a PDF file here:
https://antipolygraph.org/litigation/miranda/0015734-ca9.pdf