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Low paid public defenders

At least in Kansas public defenders are clearly underpaid.

Prosecutors working for District Attorney Nola Foulston make a median salary of $64,000 a year, according to the most recent numbers available. Foulston makes nearly $136,000.

Public defenders, meanwhile, make a median salary of little more than $44,000 a year.

That salary is so low that one Wichita public defender, German-born Klaus Dieter Mueller,nearly had his visa revoked because U.S. immigration officials considered him "underemployed" because of his pay.01

Don't waive a hearing in Kansas DUI

If you get a ticket for DUI in Kansas you can keep the right to drive for at least a little while if you insist on a driver's license revocation hearing.

Each year across Kansas, police make roughly 19,000 to 20,000 arrests for driving under the influence.

State law basically says those people's licenses will be suspended 30 days after their arrest -- unless they seek a hearing with the state.

But because of the way the hearing process works, thousands of suspected DUI drivers can legally keep driving for three to 10 months after their arrests -- sometimes longer.

Some lawmakers, looking for ways to close gaps in the state's DUI laws, say the process takes too long and endangers public safety. One way to solve it is to hire more hearing officers and support staff to conduct the hearings, they say.

Now, the state employs four attorneys to hold thousands of DUI hearings statewide.

The driver's license appeals process plays out in stages. In roughly half of the state's total DUI cases -- 9,500 to 10,000 -- the motorists appeal by requesting a hearing. While waiting on the hearing, they get to keep driving -- with a temporary license -- for typically three to four months after their arrest, said Jim Keller, the deputy general counsel for the Kansas Department of Revenue. The department's division of vehicles administers driver's licenses.

At the hearing, where they often are represented by a lawyer, most lose their case to keep driving privileges. If they lose, their license gets suspended 30 days later.

But about 400 of them a year -- a growing number -- file a second appeal to district courts, Keller said. It allows them to legally keep driving nine or 10 months or longer after their arrest.

The system tries to balance a motorist's right to a fair hearing with the public's safety.

Still, it shouldn't take so long to suspend the license of someone suspected of DUI, said state Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville, who as a defense lawyer has defended DUI suspects and as a legislator has tried to toughen DUI laws.

The time between the arrest and the initial hearing should be 30 to 45 days instead of 90 to 120 days, Journey said.

The Department of Revenue employs three full-time attorneys to conduct driver's license hearings around the state and a fourth, part-time attorney to hold most of the hearings for the Wichita area.

Don't get arrested in Texas

Texas is the nations leader in locking people up.

Long known for its tough-on-crime image, Texas on Thursday was hailed nationally for a package of reforms designed to curb its wildly growing prison population. But even as lawmakers were lauded for innovative programs for drug and alcohol abusers, Texas pushed past California to become the nation's leader in putting people behind bars.

Texas, said the new Pew Center on the States report, had 171,790 prisoners on Jan. 1 - down 326 inmates from Dec. 31, 2006. California, which long had led the nation in inmates, reduced its prison rolls by 4,068 during that period.

Nationwide, the study found one in every 100 adults is locked up in state and federal prisons or local jails. Of the states with the largest prison systems - those with 50,000 or more inmates - Texas, California, New York and Michigan reduced their offender populations in the past year.

Between 1985 and 2005, the study said, Texas' prison population quadrupled. Even after spending $2.3 billion to add 108,000 prison beds, crowding continued. As many as 17,000 more prisoners were expected to be incarcerated within five years.

Faced with the prospect of spending an additional $523 million for new prisons, Texas legislators last year virtually remade the corrections system, the study said. Key changes included dramatic expansion of drug treatment programs and so-called "diversion" beds, broad changes in parole practices and increased use of drug courts.

The reforms could save the state $210 million over two years. With the new measures in place, authorities anticipate no prison population growth in the next five years.

2 lawmakers credited

Acknowledging "it's going to take hard work to get it all to work," study director Adam Gelb credited state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, corrections committee chairmen of their respective houses, for crafting the legislation and getting it passed.

"Government effectiveness and efficiency are better targeted at high-risk dangerous offenders and incarcerating them for long periods of time," Gelb said. "People want violent and career criminals behind bars. But they don't want to spend $24,000 a year on a cell for minor violators any more than they want to pay for a bridge to nowhere."

`Tough but smart'

"There is no compromise on public safety," Whitmire said of the new programs. "They're tough but smart on fighting crime."

The legislation will create 500 single-occupancy cells for inmates incarcerated for substance abuse offenses. "Right now we've got 5,500 inmates incarcerated for DWI - three or more offenses," Whitmire said. "They're in the general population, sharing a cell with a murderer or a rapist. ... Rather than putting them in a hard two-man cell, we've gotten smart and are putting them in a treatment program."

Additionally, he said, 6,000 new beds will be created at intermediate sanction facilities. "We're sending literally thousands of probationers to prison on technicalities - failure to appear, failure to pay probation fees," Whitmire said. "We take all these requirements seriously, but we need to be smart on how to use prison space."

The intermediate lockups would hold lapsed probationers up to 60 days to contemplate their transgressions. "It's not a feel-good soft-on-crime place," Whitmire said.

The Pew report lauded the state's efforts at creating drug courts, legal proceedings that direct non-violent substance abusers to treatment programs rather than prison.

Laura Flynn, director of Harris County's five-year-old drug court program, said 155 offenders are currently enrolled in treatment programs; 58 others are completing probation after treatment; and 60 have met their probation requirements.

Only 7.8 percent - about half the national average - returned to court within a year of leaving the program.

In September, the number of criminal court judges hearing such cases doubled to four.

Don't be fooled by the rhetoric. In Texas a treatment program is just another prison but with a nicer name.

Age discrimination

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, by a 7-2 vote, that a worker claiming age bias in the workplace may start a case before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission only if he or she spells out more than a bare allegation of discrimination and the name of the employer. A “charge” necessary to open a case, the Court concluded, must include enough substance so that it be “reasonably construed” as a request for EEOC to take action to protect the workers’ rights or to settle a dispute over those rights. Largely deferring to EEOC’s views of what might constitute a “charge,” and thus start legal time lines to running, the Court said the proper test is whether an objective observer examining what the complaining worker has filed is enough to ask the agency “to activate its machinery and remedial processes.”

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When do you need a lawyer?

You need a lawyer for sure if you get arrested. You're probably going to need one if you get sued. If you think you're going to get arrested or you think you're going to get sued then you probably don't want to wait -- shopping for an attorney is much easier before you get arrested than it is if you're already in jail.

Other than those times, when do you actually need an attorney?

Lawyers.com has some guidelines.