Posted 8/29/2005 12:47 AM
8 years in a Louisiana jail, but he never went to trialBy Laura Parker, USA TODAY
When he was charged with murder in 1996, James Thomas, an
impoverished day laborer in Baton Rouge, became like many other
criminal defendants: With no money to hire a lawyer, he had to rely
on the government to provide him with one.
He then spent the next 8½ years in jail, waiting for his case to go
to trial. It never did.
Last spring, a Louisiana state appeals court ruled that prosecutors
had waited too long to try him, and it threw the charge out. By then,
Thomas was 34, his alibi witness for the night of the murder had died
of kidney disease, and his case had become a symbol of the increasing
problems within the nation's public defender system. "I can't think of
any reason why he would have so completely fallen off their radar
screen except to suggest (public defenders) were so busy and so
understaffed and underfunded, they allowed his case to slip," says
Chris Alexander, Thomas' new private lawyer. Alexander got the charge
dismissed after Thomas' mother scraped together $500 to hire him.
More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that every
person charged with a crime is entitled to legal representation —
provided by the government, if necessary — the promise is an empty
one for many low-income defendants.