The Criminal Justice Section unanimously endorsed the reports and recommendations by the Special Committee.

The Kaye Commission

In 2004 former Chief Judge Judith Kaye announced the formation of the Commission on the Future of Indigent Defense Services (Kaye Commission). Approximately one third of the commissioners were members of the NYSBA Criminal Justice Section.

The Kaye Commission’s mandate was to examine the state’s county-based indigent defense system and to recommend alternative models of assigning, monitoring and financing assigned counsel to the indigent consistent with the constitution.

The Kaye Commission study included, among other resources, testimony and written statements from representatives of public defender offices, private criminal defense attorneys, assigned counsel plan administrators, judges, prosecutors, bar associations, members of the civil rights community and indigent defendants. In its final report, dated June 18, 2006, the Kaye Commission concluded:

. . . there is, indeed, a crisis in the delivery of defense services to the indigent throughout New York State and that the right to effective assistance of counsel, guaranteed by both the federal and state constitutions, is not being provided to a large portion of those who are entitled to it. In general terms, this failure is attributable to a lack of an independent statewide oversight mechanism that can set standards and ensure accountability in the provision of indigent criminal defense services and to a grievous lack of adequate funding by the state for those services. [See page 15 of the report.]


The Criminal Justice Section endorsed the reports and recommendations of the Kaye Commission.

The reports by the Special Committee and the Kaye Commission aptly demonstrate how our current indigent defender system has fallen far short of its statutory and constitutional obligations to provide quality defense services to indigent defendants.

The Criminal Justice Section is committed to transforming the recommendations of the Special Committee and the Kaye Commission into a reality in a much shorter period of time than it took to reduce the state’s indigent defender system to its current state of disrepair.

Legislation to implement the Kaye Commission recommendations has been introduced in both the Senate (S04311A) and the Assembly (A09087), and our Section remains hopeful not only that such legislation will be made into law, but that such law will compel the necessary reform of the state’s indigent defender system.

Jean T. Walsh
Chair, Criminal Justice Section