By CRAIG FREILICH

It will have no immediate effect on St. Lawrence County, but a suit asking for more state support for underfunded county indigent defense programs in New York State has been settled on terms favorable to those seeking the support.

But it should not be long before the state begins providing substantial support for indigent defense programs around the state.

The suit, in which the counties of Onondaga, Washington, Ontario, Schuyler, and Suffolk were affected, indicates to St. Lawrence County Public Defender Stephen D. Button that “the governor has committed, as I understand it, to assist with indigent defense with additional funding to provide representation as required by the Constitution.

“Our expectation and hope is that the governor will follow through with a good-faith effort to assist” with the defense of people facing state legal action but who cannot afford legal counsel, Button said.

“Today is the first step to get us to the point where there is adequate assurance” that indigent defense in the New York State jurisprudential system will meet its obligations, Button said.

The suit, called Hurrell-Harring v. State of New York, was due to go to trial this week.

Counties have been struggling to find the money and local support for indigent defense services and St. Lawrence County Administrator Karen St. Hilaire, along with officials from 14 other counties, had signed a statement in support of the suit.

The agreement is expected to go into effect in the five counties in November, and provide momentum to the rest of the counties in the state who have foundered under the pressure of the Supreme Court’s determination of the right of the indigent to counsel and the lack of support from the state for counties’ indigent counsel operations.

St. Lawrence County was one of more than a dozen counties that expressed their support for the counties bringing the suit, which, according to a statement from those counties, was asking for the state to pick up the responsibilities they dropped on the counties after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright where the court declared a defendant’s right to counsel, paid for by the states if necessary.

Among the provisions of the agreement is the tracking of the caseloads of attorneys engaged in “Mandated Representation” in the five counties named in the suit, and determination of “the appropriate numerical caseload/workload standards for each provider of mandated representation, whether public defender, legal aid society, assigned counsel program, or conflict defender inn each county, for representation in both trial- and appellate-level cases,” and how the standards will be monitored and enforced.

It also provides for addressing the costs associated with implementing plans for improved indigent defense, earmarking funds in the 2015-16 fiscal year, and for money in the annual governor’s budget beginning in FY 2016/17 “and for each state fiscal year thereafter” to accomplish the state’s goals.

Additional criteria are laid out regarding determination of eligibility for indigent legal services.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which was among those initiating the suit, said in a press release that “the historic settlement…lays the foundation for statewide reform of New York’s broken public defense system. By entering into the agreement, the state is taking responsibility for providing public defense for the first time in the more than 50 years since the Supreme Court held that it is a state obligation.”