The Attorney General's response to FACDL's quo warranto writ

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope your long weekend was as wonderful as mine. While I took several days off from blogging, I got a copy of the AG's response to the FACDL action, not because of my direct request to the AG's office for a copy, but because of a friendly tipster.

What is it with public servant's not willing to click "reply" on an email from a citizen like myself? For more thoughts along those lines, see the post above.

Anyway, here it is. Click here for a pdf of the AG's response.

Here are some excerpts, presented as the titles to the various points of arguement:

A. The OCCCRCs Are Not Public Defenders Under Article V, Section 18 Of The Florida Constitution, But Act In Place Of The Public Defenders.

A. Petitioner’s Policy Concerns Are Without Merit.

In the second section of its argument, petitioner maintains that because the regional counsel are not elected they do not enjoy the same independence as do public defenders or court-appointed private counsel, and therefore the Sixth Amendment guarantee to effective assistance of counsel in criminal cases is somehow impaired.

[editor: While I agree with the FACDL that the new system pretty much has ineffective assistance of counsel built in to it, I can also understand the arguement of the AG in this section]

A. The Governor, the President of the Senate, and the Secretary of State Are Not Proper Parties To This Quo Warranto Action.

[Editor again: So there you go. That's pretty much it. The AG's arguement comes down to, if I read this correctly, that the Regional Counsels are, in fact, simply subordinates of the various public defenders, nothing more nor less. This, of course, completely ignores dependency cases, which have never been part of the public defenders' responsibilities. Perhaps the AG doesn't see a need to approach that issue since it wasn't raised in the FACDL quo warranto action.]