COURT NEWS

CASSOPOLIS – Cass County Court officials have begun a new collaboration with the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Indians to share information. Meanwhile, Cass officials also have had their plans to provide services to indigent defendants accepted by the state of Michigan.

The Michigan Tribal Judicial Forum is an effort to bridge the gaps between state court systems and tribal court systems and provide for a better working relationship between the two systems.

Chief Judge Michael Petoskey is the chief judge of the Pokagon and Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Bands of Pottawatomi Indians. He noted that tribal courts are legitimate courts “whose judgments and orders ought to be recognized on par with those coming from state court.”

It’s something that Cass County officials are recognizing. “Even though tribal judges represent sovereign nations, sometimes the Michigan Courts do not provide the proper amount of respect for the authority of that tribal court,” Cass County Chief Judge Susan Dobrich said.

One such collaboration between the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Cass County Courts has been related to child support establishment and collection, she reported. The tribe has collected more than $3 million in child support payments in the last 10 years for Michigan alone.

These successful child support collection efforts led to additional collaborations including a recent collaboration geared at using the Cass County Friend of the Court’s child support experts to provide child support calculations to the Tribe for divorce cases filed in the tribe’s Court.

Despite the tribe’s recent adoption of a divorce code, they did not have the legal infrastructure or need to prepare and enter child support orders due to its very limited territorial jurisdiction.

“We have worked out an arrangement where the Tribe handles the divorce, but the Cass County Friend of the Court will handle the child support calculations for them, as well as providing child support enforcement as needed,” Dobrich said.

As for the indigent defense program, Cass officials have complied with new state regulations that require counties to do more to assist criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire an attorney.  Michigan has been cited for years for its lack of services and has been ranked in the bottom 10 states in terms of money spent for indigent defense.

The state’s poor record in the area of indigent defense led to the establishment of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission and the setting of standards for all counties and courts to follow.

Berrien County is already a year into its indigent defense program. There, county officials chose to fund an office with a staff of attorneys and investigators rather than contracting with outside attorneys as had previously been the practice.

The Cass plan was developed over several months in 2017 and was approved by the county’s board of commissioners in November and was one of over two dozen applications accepted as compliant by the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission in December.

The new state standards require counties to provide more education to court-appointed attorneys as well as ensure that defendants are provided with counsel at their arraignments and meet with their indigent defense attorneys within 72 hours of their arrest. Counties are also required to provide money to defense attorneys for investigators.

Cass County Court Administrator Carol Bealor said the county is now waiting for legislative action to fund grants to pay for the implementation of the new program. Information in the county’s approved plan shows that Cass is asking for just over $100,000 to comply with the state standards.

Cass County spent $273,500 last year to contract with four area attorneys to provide services to indigent district and circuit court defendants. Attorneys now under contract with the county are James Miller, Robert Drake, Gregory Feldman and Robert Steinhoff.

Compliance with the four state standards would cost the county an additional $75,740. That amount includes $51,480 to pay for attorneys appearing at arraignments, $6,160 for attorney education and training, $17,500 for experts and investigators and $600 for supplies and equipment.

As county officials noted in the county plan, they are already providing some of the new services the state is requiring. The county already provides some legal education and training, space for attorney/client meetings and some money for investigators.

By DEBRA HAIGHT

BCR Correspondent