From Overlawyered, Radley Balko at Reason Hit and Run posts about one of the most fundamentally disturbing court scandals imaginable.

Since 1994, Chief Judge Edward Dufresne has been handling the appeals of indigent Louisiana convicts who had to file their own briefs.  Last year, the aid Dufresne had assigned to handle those appeals committed suicide.  According to his suicide note, Jarrold Peterson killed himself in part because of the guilt he faced over what he had been asked to do as part of his job. 

Peterson sent a posthumous letter to Louisiana’s Judiciary Commission with a damning allegation.  He said Dufresne had instructed him to deny every appeal not prepared by an attorney.  Peterson said he was instructed to write up and file the denials without every showing the appeals to the judges.  Peterson handled about 2,400 such cases in the 13 years he was in charge of them.

Radley writes that about 90% of all defendants in Louisiana are indigent, and lawyers are only provided to indigent defendants on appeal in death penalty cases.  How good are you feeling about the system at the moment?

One has to wonder how it is possible that nobody notice that this was happening?  Sure, most pro se appeals lose because defendants lack the ability to comprehend the legal issues, no less present and argue them persuasively.  But not a single pro se appeal survived? 

Sure, Judge Dufresne should spend some quality time hanging out in the cell with some of those whose lives he doomed in the name of “judicial economy” and Louisiana justice.  It will likely come shortly after they build a statue of him holding the ten commandments. 

But the idea that the entirety of this fell into the hands of an aid, and that one person could summarily undermine a state’s criminal justice system seems impossible.  Peterson, whose suicide is an act of cowardice, felt guilty?  Poor, poor Peterson.  How did he think the men and women who believed that there was some hope, little though it might be, that their appeal would be given some consideration feel?

As I’ve noted before, judges hate pro se litigants.  It’s a huge burden, a nightmare, trying to decipher their irrational rants and vehement yet unexplained demands for justice.  They are the very embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, absolutely clueless as to how incomprehensible they are.  This is how the Times-Picayune described it:

It is not unknown for inmates to have a legitimate grievance and for jailhouse lawyers to advance cogent and well-researched arguments on their behalf. But most “pro se” briefs are probably frivolous and nonsensical, and it is only natural that judges should tend to look askance as they buckle down to the task of reading them.

The judges weren’t looking askance over at the state Court of Appeal in Gretna, however, because they weren’t looking at all. For 13 years, the court ignored the lucubrations of all convicts who appealed on their own account.

But, these indigent defendants have no choice.  They are given no counsel, and they are poor.  These aren’t the wiseguys who know better than anyone else, but those who are left without an option but to do the best they can. 

Many would lose in any event.  Most, even.  But some would have a viable argument for reversal, and may in fact be innocent.  Judge Dufresne decided that this group, however small, was not worth the effort.  And so he decided to sacrifice them to make his job easier and more convenient.

What kind of rats nest exists in Louisiana, that this went on for 13 years and nobody noticed?  Every criminal writ application was supposed to be reviewed by three judges.  Didn’t the other judges on the court notice that they had never seen a pro se application in 13 years?

And if anyone needed an explanation as to why it is critical to provide counsel to the indigent on appeal, look no further. 

And what is the Louisiana Supreme Court going to do to “cure” this problem? 

So the state Supreme Court, after receiving petitions from hundreds of appellants spurned by an idle and unprincipled Fifth Circuit, has stepped in. Kinda.

The solution, the Supreme Court has decided, can safely be entrusted to the idle and unprincipled Fifth Circuit, which kindly volunteered to take a belated look at the appeals once Peterson had blown the whistle.

Is it now clear why no lawyer outside the State of Louisiana considers anything coming out of that court system meaningful?