In summary
The reporting “speaks volumes about the role that public defenders play in maintaining the integrity of the whole system, not just in defending their clients.”
CalMatters investigative reporter Anat Rubin has won the Sidney Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation for her story, “The WalMart of public defense: How justice gets sold to the lowest bidder in rural California.” Every month, the Sidney Award honors outstanding investigative journalism that exposes social and economic injustices.
Judges said they were drawn to the investigation because it was “original, well reported, and well-presented.” Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein said the reporting “speaks volumes about the role that public defenders play in maintaining the integrity of the whole system, not just in defending their clients.”
Rubin’s investigation found that nearly half of California counties pay private lawyers and firms to represent poor people in criminal cases, and that most of them do it through what’s known as a “flat-fee” contract, meaning they pay a fixed amount, regardless of how many cases the attorneys handle or how much time they spend on each case. As Rubin details in her story, these arrangements so clearly disincentivize investigating and litigating cases that they’ve been banned in other parts of the country. But they have flourished in California.
She focused the story on one firm with several such contracts throughout the state — a firm that’s become known as the “WalMart of public defense” for its ubiquity and tactics.
This project is the second part of Rubin’s series examining the lack of key safeguards against wrongful conviction in California. Her first piece, “The Man Who Unsolved a Murder,” found that poor people accused of crimes, who account for at least 80% of criminal defendants, are routinely convicted in California without anyone investigating the charges against them. Close to half of California’s 58 counties do not employ any full-time public defense investigators. Among the remaining counties, defendants’ access to investigators fluctuates wildly, but it’s almost always inadequate.
Read the Sidney Hillman Foundation’s interview with Rubin about the piece.
