Maine’s criminal court system is in a constitutional crisis. The state is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union because of the gross inadequacies in the system.

As a member of the dwindling Maine criminal defense bar, I join with many of my remaining colleagues in calling upon Gov. Janet Mills, the Maine State Legislature, and the Maine Supreme Court to undertake emergency measures to address the problems immediately.

I have practiced in the Maine criminal court system for 37 years. To me, there are few professions more noble than that of a criminal defense lawyer. We are the ones who challenge the government. We fight for the presumption of innocence and due process for all, including the poor, minorities, mentally ill, immigrants, and those suffering from the ravages of substance abuse. Our jobs are not always the most popular among the general public, but without our services we would be a banana republic.

We once had over 600 court-appointed criminal defense lawyers rostered in the state through the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services. We were down to 400 lawyers and headed for crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020. By then many experienced criminal trial lawyers were aging out of the system and many others simply left for other areas of practice, fed up with the low pay and the overwhelming advantages favoring prosecutors in the criminal court process.

Our trial court system was basically shut down for over a year due to the pandemic. By the time things resumed in the late spring of 2021 — in a compromised manner with masks, socially distanced jurors, and Zoom hearings — we were in a full-fledged crisis. Only about 280 lawyers remained on the rosters statewide.

A year later we are now down to 184 lawyers remaining, and the numbers are dropping every week. Our criminal dockets remain unconstitutionally backlogged in most counties, with some indigent defendants sitting in jail for as much as two years or more awaiting trial. Some counties, like Aroostook, have no criminal defense lawyers remaining.

In the meantime, criminal complaints in the state have risen to a record high of over 31,000 this past year. Our criminal defense lawyers are juggling hundreds of open files at a time. We are in an emergency. I call on the governor and Legislature to enact the following measures, immediately:

1. Raise the hourly pay rate to the current federal defender scale of $158 per hour. Our current rate of $80 is a pittance compared to what lawyers in the private sector receive. It barely pays for overhead. We take on very complicated cases like homicides and other felonies, with serious consequences. Paralegals in even medium sized law firms are being billed out at rates twice that of what we are being paid as lawyers. Federal public defenders are paid nearly twice as much as those of us practicing at the state level. Our cases are usually far more complicated and serious than those at the federal level, which are governed by federal sentencing guidelines.

2. Implement student loan relief, health insurance, and state retirement programs. We are unable to recruit new young lawyers because many of them are coming out of law school saddled with over $100,000 in student loan debt and cannot survive at our current pay rate. We simply cannot compete with the benefits afforded to state attorneys.

3. Judges at all levels must engage in leadership to address the problem. We need judges to testify on our behalf before the judiciary and appropriations committees of the Maine Legislature, and call for an emergency meeting with Gov. Mills. Their court system is becoming delegitimized. Most pending nonviolent misdemeanors need to be dismissed to allow our drowning court dockets to get caught back up.

There are many other problems that need fixing, like repairing a bail code that leaves poor and mentally ill people in jail for months and even years awaiting trial, while others with resources get out. The above measures would be a good start, however, on an emergency basis.

The people of Maine need to understand that if we do not invest in our criminal court system, basic due process rights will continue to be eroded. Without immediate action, the ACLU will prevail in its litigation against the state, and it will be much more costly for taxpayers in the long run.

Jim Howaniec is a local criminal defense lawyer and former mayor of Lewiston.