Tag: Gideon v. Wainright

Without a lawyer

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

As I prepared to testify on legislation providing a right to an attorney for poor tenants facing eviction, I expected to tell this story.

Gideon v. Wainwright is the Supreme Court case that held a defendant charged with a felony is entitled to a lawyer, paid for by the state.

Gideon’s Trumpet, written by the New York Times Supreme Court correspondent, Anthony Lewis, is about the case.

I asked my parents to give it to me for Chanukah when I was 14 years old.

Lewis signed it for me when he spoke in Baltimore in 2003.

For Sandy Rosenberg, who writes laws

“This committee writes laws,” I began my testimony at 10:15 last night.

But instead of talking about the book and the author’s inscription, I said this.

An attorney for the property owners, when testifying on the bill before this one, stated that,  “If rent is paid, there are no evictions.”

Under the laws that this committee has written, the tenant should not pay the rent if the property is unsafe.

But a tenant doesn’t know that.

The overwhelming majority of tenants face eviction without a lawyer.  The landlord is represented in court, with very few exceptions.

The laws we write are not enforced if the tenant is without a lawyer.

The public policy we enact – the balancing of interests, is not a reality.

Gideon’s Trumpet in Housing Court

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I first became aware of the importance of being represented by a lawyer when I was 14 years old.

That’s when I read Gideon’s Trumpet, the book about Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court case that held a criminal defendant facing a jail sentence is entitled to a lawyer.

As a legislator, I’ve worked to extend this right to civil cases.  One of the people I’ve worked with is Steve Sachs, a former Attorney General of Maryland.  He argued for a civil Gideon before the Court of Appeals, but the court ruled otherwise, 4-3.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the public aware of the harmful consequences of eviction.  Consequently, two fellow legislators and I will introduce a bill creating a right to counsel in housing court.

Our letter to the editor was published in today’s Baltimore Sun. 

 

“Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,” wrote Justice Hugo Black in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases.

We believe that the same can be said for housing court, where the landlord is almost always represented, but the tenant is not.

Eviction has a crippling effect on families in any time but especially in the midst of a public health emergency. Attorney General Brian Frosh has dramatically outlined the “recurring nightmare” of an eviction notice (”Attorney General: Maryland eviction process ‘unfair to tenants,’” Dec. 11).

Families in our community who are renters are extremely vulnerable. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the inequities in our landlord-tenant system. Establishing a right to counsel would be a substantial gain for working families.

According to a recent study, tenants who are represented by legal counsel can avoid eviction in 92% of cases. In addition, counsel is estimated to save the state millions of dollars by preventing a displaced family’s reliance on a wide variety of public services.

The essential next step is to provide legal counsel for tenants threatened with eviction. That’s why we are introducing legislation in Annapolis next month to establish that basic protection.

Both parties, Justice Black declared, should stand “equal before the law.” Our legislation would enable them to do just that.

Shelly Hettleman, Wanika Fisher and Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg

The writers, all Democrats, represent, respectively, District 11 (Baltimore County) in the Maryland Senate and Districts 47B (Prince George’s County) and 41 (Baltimore) in the Maryland House of Delegates. Senator Hettleman and Delegate Fisher will be sponsoring legislation creating a right to counsel in eviction cases. Delegate Rosenberg will co-sponsor the House bill.

 

Trumpeting and Extending Gideon

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2018 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I read Gideon’s Trumpet when I was 14.

The book tells the story of Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court case which established every defendant’s right to counsel when accused of a felony.

Providing legal counsel in non-criminal cases has been one of my priorities as a legislator, in no small measure because of the case and the book.

Consequently, I did not need to read my testimony today on House Bill 942.

My bill would require that before a person is thrown in jail for not paying the rent, he or she is entitled to a lawyer.

Just like the ruling in Gideon.

“There is a simple but fundamental premise for my bill,” I told the committee. “No one should go to jail for failing to pay the rent.”

The Maryland Judicial Conference opposed my bill because it is “rare for individuals to be detained by commissioners when brought in on a body attachment.”

“Rare is too often,” I told the committee.

I contrasted that opposition with the support of retired Chief Judge Robert Bell, whose written testimony stated, “This process [of body attachment] applies, and is especially invidious with respect, to debts arising from a residential tenancy.”

For good luck, I brought my tattered copy of Gideon’s Trumpet to the hearing.

Anthony Lewis, the author, autographed it: “for Sandy Rosenberg, who writes laws.”

“Mr. Sachs spoke for me.”

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

This is why I wanted to become a lawyer.

At age 14, I read Gideon’s Trumpet, the account of Gideon v. Wainwright, where the Supreme Court decided that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a lawyer if you’re accused of a felony.

I wanted to be a lawyer who protected people’s constitutional rights.

When the state seeks to deny your liberty, Gideon held, you are entitled to an attorney.

When the state seeks to deny you custody of your children, however, you are not.

House Bill 348 would change that.

The product of a task force that I served on, the bill would require the state to fund legal representation in contested child custody cases and in protective order proceedings in domestic violence cases.

In my testimony, I cited statistics that in these cases only 20% of the people involved had a lawyer.

The case for my bill was best made by someone who did not testify today.

Deborah Frase had conditions imposed on her custody of her son at the trial level. She did not have an attorney.

When she won on appeal, she was represented by Steve Sachs, former Attorney General of Maryland.

He told us today what Ms. Frase said after her case was heard by Maryland’s highest court.

“Mr. Sachs spoke for me.”

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