Proposed standards would raise bar for MI’s indigent defense system

On October 26, 2015, Michigan Indigent Defense Commission Chair Jim Fisher and Executive Director Jonathan Sacks spoke with WKAR’s Mark Bashore on Current State to discuss the work of the MIDC, the first set of proposed minimum standards, and how they will change and improve Michigan’s Indigent Defense Delivery Systems.

“As the 2008 [NLADA] report indicated, we just don’t have any uniformity across the state in terms of qualifications, training, evaluation, compensation and resources and so forth. The entire system has been underfunded for decades. The other problem we noted on the advisory commission was getting accurate data about what we have across the state is a very tough issue. Our main recommendation was to create a permanent commission so that we would have the resources to do a through investigation before deciding what the best solution would be.”  Judge James H. Fisher, MIDC Chairperson.

Listen to the entire interview on WKAR’s Current State.