ALBANY – The Bloomberg administration has established a legally valid plan for indigent defense that uses both institutional providers and private assigned counsel under Article 18B of the County Law, a narrowly divided Court of Appeals ruled today.
The majority of the 4-3 court said the plan introduced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2008 and modified in 2010 satisfies the requirements of County Law §722 for a so-called “combination plan” in which the city assigns to institutional providers the cases of poor defendants where primary legal services providers have a conflict of interest.
