By Stephen Anderson

Editor

To the victims, spoilage

"Draconian"? It's a word, like "decimate," that through common use and abuse has changed in meaning from its proper linguistic roots.

When Draco, an Athenian legislator, set down Draconian law 26 centuries ago as Greece's first codified constitution, the inaugural penal code was arbitrarily and absolutely tyrannical. The punishment for almost all torts was death.

When questioned about liberal application of capital punishment for a misdeed that did not result in a death, Draco said lesser crimes deserved it just as much as murder, for which he could conjure no condemnation of greater magnitude.

In civil practice, a person who was indebted to someone of higher status could be pressed into slavery. But one who owed money to a person of lower class received little more than a slap on the wrist.

All that was back about 620 B.C., in the 39th Olympiad. Draco gets credit, at least, for putting oral laws in writing for the first time, and posting them on wooden plaques attached to three-sided, turnable posts.

Draconian law lasted for six centuries before its provisions were revised by Solon, whose very name implies wisdom. Only homicide remained a crime punishable by execution.

In dictionaries nowadays – 657 Olympiads later – "draconian" acts are defined as severe, strict, even ruthless, but death is no longer an option.

When the Equal Justice Foundation accurately referred to the governor's legal aid budget slashing as "a draconian cutback," however, it was in effect describing a death blow to the hopes and dreams of thousands of unfortunate Illinois residents.

Rather than okay the General Assembly's increase, from $3.5 million to a sorely needed $5 million, for the Equal Justice Foundation's 23 grantees, the governor unexpectedly and appallingly reduced it to $2 million.

At a time when mushrooming foreclosure cases beget crises for low-income families, particularly in vast rural and underserved urban locales, the cutback could deprive tens of impoverished thousands from needed legal assistance.

An IEJF spokeswoman said the loss of essential funding "will decimate (in common usage: to reduce drastically, not to kill every 10th lawyer) the very services that help victims of widespread predatory lending schemes and mortgage fraud hold on to their homes and their savings."

Given the impasse in Springfield among political leaders, little can be done by or for the legal assistance community. Fewer lawyers + Fewer staff = Less access to justice.

The private bar is willing to contribute pro bono service, as the 2007 ARDC report clearly showed. But without the screening processes carried out by provider agencies, most practitioners may not know who is eligible to receive it.

Prosecutors, defenders also shortchanged

Similarly hamstrung, various segments of the state's criminal practice bar are reeling from significant nickel-and-dime erosions of budgetary expectations.

Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine, the Chicago Tribune reported July 29, had hoped for $3 million to cover the cost of videotaped interrogations, a mandated reform. The legislature cut that to $1 million, all of which the governor has eliminated.

Also vetoed was $1 million earmarked for state's attorneys in the prosecution of capital cases outside of Cook County.

A $1 million allocation for private defense lawyers to handle death penalty cases in Cook County was eliminated, as was a legislated $400,000 hike for the county's public defenders.

The state appellate defender received a paltry $100,000 increase, but vetoes from two previous budget years had already resulted in cutting 34 staff lawyer positions.

Last – and least in dollars, but perhaps worst in its impact – the Downstate Innocence Project failed once again to get even the bare $240,000 it needed to continue representing, and often exonerating, incarcerated indigents in non-capital cases.

These and other trimmings of funds the legislature approved "to prevent or correct wrongful convictions," the Tribune reported, mount up to more than $5.5 million.

All tolled, the governor's slashes of civil and criminal litigation appropriations ($8.5 million) represent only four-tenths of one percent of what he sees as a $2 billion shortfall in budgeted expenses vs. anticipated revenues.

That doesn't help much to right the state's slumping financial status, but it sure wrongs those who strive to see that the public interest is served in courtrooms across Illinois.

There appears to be little chance of stubborn politicians balancing the budget any time soon. No victory is likely to be claimed, and only leftover spoils will escheat to the victims who seek justice.