Program Profile: Indigent Defense for Homicide Cases (Philadelphia, Penn.)

This was a natural experiment to examine the impact of attorneys from the Defender Association of Philadelphia who represent indigent defenders. The program is rated Promising. Treatment group defendants were statistically significantly less likely to be found guilty of murder, and had shorter average sentences, compared with control group defendants represented by private counsel. There was no statistically significant effect on being found guilty of any charge or receiving a death sentence.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals/Program Components

Indigent defense involves the constitutionally mandated free representation of individuals accused of crimes who are unable to afford private representation. States, counties, and local jurisdictions utilized various methods to provide indigent defense to defendants who cannot afford a lawyer, including a public defender office, an assigned counsel system, or a contract system (Office of Justice Programs 2011). In Philadelphia, the indigent defense system relies on both public defenders and private counsel. Pennsylvania is the only state in which each county is solely responsible for funding indigent defense without any assistance from the state; therefore, the costs are backed by the city of Philadelphia (Anderson and Heaton 2013, 4).

Prior to 1993, the Defender Association of Philadelphia represented almost all indigent defendants accused of crime with the exception of those accused of murder. However, beginning on April 1, 1993, every fifth indigent murder case became sequentially assigned at the preliminary arraignment to be represented by attorneys from the Defender Association, while the other four cases are assigned to appointed counsel.

In Philadelphia, after a defendant is arrested for murder, they must receive a preliminary arraignment. At the arraignment, the court magistrate reviews information about the defendant compiled by the court’s pretrial unit in order to determine if the defendant can afford counsel. As a result of the change in 1993, if the defendant in a case with a murder charge is unlikely to be able to afford counsel, the magistrate appoints either the Defender Association or a to-be-determined appointed counsel to represent the defendant.

The Defender Association has a homicide unit, which consists of 10 experienced public defenders who have familiarity and understanding of practicing law in the Philadelphia court system. Every case is staffed by two lawyers, and one or more investigators and mitigation specialists as needed. All staff are salaried, and the unit has access to a limited set of funds to hire expert witnesses. All lawyers are full-time Assistant Defenders who are members of the Pennsylvania Bar and are not permitted to maintain a private practice or to participate in partisan political activity (Defender Association of Philadelphia 2013).

In contrast, defendants not represented by the Defender Association are assigned counsel by a judge from the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. These attorneys are from private practices; however, in these cases, they function as a public defender, but are compensated differently. Specifically, for murder cases (both capital and non-capital cases), assigned counsel receive a flat fee for pretrial preparation, and are paid a stipulated amount each day if the case goes to trial.

Study 1

Anderson and Heaton (2013) used a natural experiment to measure the difference that a lawyer makes in homicide cases being processed in Philadelphia, Penn. Since April 1993, every fifth murder case has been sequentially assigned at the preliminary arraignment to the Defender Association of Philadelphia. The other four cases are assigned to appointed counsel. The treatment group (n = 480) included cases with Defender Association attorneys and the control group (n = 2,677) included cases with appointed counsel.

The sample of defendants assigned private counsel was predominately male (73 percent) and Black (93 percent) with an average age of 25.7 years. The sample of defendants assigned to be represented by the Defender Association was also predominately male (74 percent) and Black (95 percent) with an average age of 26.3 years. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups on demographic characteristics.

The dataset came from the Philadelphia Courts and included a sample of 3,412 defendants charged with murder in municipal court between 1994 and 2005. This information was supplemented by collecting both the Municipal Court and Court of Common Pleas dockets for all of the cases in the sample from the Pennsylvania Judiciary’s online docket database. To identify defendants assigned to the Defender Association based on the 1-in-5 rule, case logs provided by the Defender Association were examined. After eliminating defendants with missing data, those who could not be matched to the logs, or those with other data anomalies, this left a final sample of 3,157 defendants.

The sentencing data reported on maximum and/or minimum sentences for each defendant, as well as life and death sentences. The expected time to be served in prison was calculated based on data from the National Corrections Reporting Program.

After defendants were assigned, there was some “crossover” between the treatment (Defender Association defense counsel) and control (appointed counsel) groups. For example, some defendants hired private defense counsel who replaced either the appointed counsel or the public defender. In some instances, there was a conflict of interest identified that prohibited the public defender from representing the defendant. To address the issue of crossover, an instrumental variables (IV) analysis was used. The IV methods allowed the study authors to exploit the randomness of the initial assignment to estimate the causal impact of public defender representation. Additionally, the IV methods allowed the authors to estimate the impact of public defender representation even when there is non-random sorting of defendants across different types of attorneys subsequent to the initial assignment. The IV analysis allowed for additional covariates to be controlled, yielding more precise estimates of attorney impacts. No subgroup analyses were conducted.

More information about the Defender Association of Philadelphia can be found at the organization’s website.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: