ALBANY – Criminal defense advocates said that with the state Legislature’s unanimous passage of a bill requiring the state to take over indigent criminal defense costs in New York, their effort to correct a 50-year-old mistake will now focus on Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Costs that have been borne primarily by New York City and the 57 counties outside the city since the state responded to the mandate in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), to provide counsel to all defendants who could not afford it, increasingly would be assumed by the state over seven years.
