Today, Hunter spoke with Richard Mauro, Executive Director of the Salt Lake City Legal Defender Association, to talk all things Utah Public Defense.

 

Not even a decade ago, Utah and Pennsylvania stood as the last two states who provided exactly zero dollars towards Public Defense. As expected, this created a patchwork system in the state that left places like Utah and Salt Lake County able to afford full time public defense offices while the more rural areas of the state were forced to rely on the cheapest flat rate contract imaginable.

 

As a result of these flat rate contracts, a culture of met and plea arose. Surprisingly, it was the absence of appeals, despite countless stories of ineffective assistance of counsel, that drove people to start evaluating Public Defense in Utah. As alarm bells started going off, the Sixth Amendment Center’s 2015 report made even more issues come to light.

 

By the end of this episode, you will have a clear understanding of what has gone right, wrong, and what sparked the change in Utah Public Defense.

Guest:

 

Richard Mauro, Executive Director, Salt Lake City Legal Defender Association 

 

Key Topics:

• How Richard got into Public Defense [5:30]
• Differences in Federal Public Defense and Utah’s Public Defense [6:54]
• Utah Public Defense Before Sixth Amendment Center [8:51]
• How did the lack of Appeals show issues with Utah PD [11:30]
• Major findings of the 6AC Report [14:12]
• How the politics of SLC help Public Defense [18:00]
• What calculus went into the structure of Utah Public Defense? [22:50]
• How does the structure of Utah politics help Public Defense? [26:18]
• How does the Utah Public Defense grant system work? [29:03]
• Keeping the grant money coming [31:55]
• Long term goals of the system [38:45]
• Salt Lake City Public Defense successes and challenges [42:57]

Resources:

 SLDA Website

https://www.sllda.com/

Sixth Amendment Center Report

https://sixthamendment.org/6ac/6AC_utahreport.pdf

Utah Indigent Defense Commission

https://idc.utah.gov/

Contact Hunter Parnell:

 

[email protected]

 

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