News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Attorney Julie Miller works at her desk at the Northeast Michigan Regional Defender Office on Thursday.

ALPENA — A bill currently stalled in Michigan’s Congress has the potential to give indigent youth a better shot at obtaining a good attorney to represent them.

House Bill 4630 would expand the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission to oversee and fund the legal defense of Michigan’s children, according to the State Bar of Michigan.

Currently, the MIDC is made up of 18 voting members. The bill would expand that number to 19 to add a member with experience in defending youth in delinquency proceedings, according to the bill analysis by the Senate Fiscal Agency.

Through an executive order signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on June 9, 2021, a task force was created to address juvenile justice reform, according to the bill analysis.

The task force released its report on July 22, 2022. They found that the quality of services and case management received by youth, from defense to post-disposition placement, differs across the state and that the state lacks uniform judicial justice policies and quality assurance standards, leading to disparities the state cannot address and data it cannot rely upon.

Additionally, the lack of state centralization has led to discrepancies in the implementation of research-based, developmentally appropriate practices across the state. Accordingly, children participating in the judicial justice system may not receive quality care or may receive care differently from their peers, according to the bill analysis.

House Bill 4630 seeks to rectify these issues and centralize funding for public defenders of indigent youth in juvenile delinquency cases.

The bill seemed likely to reach the governor’s desk in mid-December, but the last action taken was Dec. 18.

Attorney Julie Miller from the Northeast Michigan Regional Defender Office explained how public defenders of indigent youth receive funding now.

“Counties use money out of their general fund to pay appointed attorneys that they contract with,” she said.

Often, these attorneys are not paid much to take on juvenile cases, she said. If the bill is passed, attorneys would receive funding from the MIDC, increasing their pay. An increase in pay would also draw more skilled attorneys to take on the cases of indigent youth, Miller said.

Public defenders funded by the MIDC have to stay in compliance with eight standards. One of those standards is the education and training of defense counsel, which includes requiring attorneys to take continuing education courses.

If public defenders for juvenile delinquency cases were to be funded by the MIDC, they would have to meet those standards, Miller said.

“They would be required to go through the training, the ongoing training, like we do,” Miller said. “It would just really improve the level of service.”

Miller said there is an idea out there that juvenile cases aren’t that big of a deal. However, they can greatly affect sentencing if a juvenile offends as an adult.

“An adult convicted of a felony is subject to the sentencing guidelines, and the guidelines score various aspects of the person’s history and the current offense,” she said. “Prior juvenile offenses are scored as a prior record variable. So if they’ve got juvenile adjudications on their record, an individual may score higher on the guidelines, and whatever that score is could potentially be the difference between going to prison and not going to prison.”

If the bill is revived, it could give kids a better shot at getting their cases dismissed, negotiating plea bargains, or getting lower sentences.

The News reached out to Rep. Cam Cavitt for comment and did not hear back.