SALT LAKE CITY — Claiming years of inaction to repair an inconsistent, overburdened and underfunded legal defense system, the ACLU of Utah and the law firm Holland and Hart have filed a class-action lawsuit against the state.

Filed Tuesday in 3rd District Court, the lawsuit describes a "system in crisis" that fails to meet Sixth Amendment requirements to provide meaningful counsel and representation for any person accused of a crime but who can't afford their own attorney.

Karen McCreary, outgoing executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said that after years of spotlighting the same concerns with no action from the state, the advocacy organization had little choice but to turn to litigation.

"We cannot have a criminal justice system with any integrity if Utahns are not ensured vigorous legal representation when facing the power of the state," McCreary said at a press conference Tuesday. "There must be a time where we say, we need to move forward, we need to really address this to make sure that the Sixth Amendment guarantees are real in our state."

Patience, McCreay said, cannot fix the problem.

"This is not about our being patient. It's about all the many people in our state who are impacted, who have no way to get out of jail, who plead to something they haven't done, whose families are impacted," she said.

The Utah Attorney General's Office issued a statement Tuesday calling the lawsuit "costly and potentially counterproductive." Chief federal deputy and general counsel Parker Douglas lamented the lawsuit's timing, which he said comes before the Utah Indigent Defense Commission, formed earlier this year under SB155, has had time to begin making an impact.

"The bill was the result of an extraordinary effort by the Utah judiciary, the Utah Legislature, members of the county attorneys, and many other state officials, as well as leaders of state and county criminal defense groups," Douglas said. "To ask a judge to review these measures now, before any opportunity to see the results of that effort, is premature and will require a single judge to review the collective efforts of the many interested stakeholders who have spent thousands of hours addressing the same issues."

John Harrington, a partner at Holland and Hart, said the commission "has no teeth to it" with no enforcement capabilities.

According to Harrington, the state has failed to meet "bare minimum standards of a constitutional defense" for those facing criminal accusations and unable to pay for their own defense counsel.

"This situation with indigent defense is a blight on our profession and on the judiciary," Harrington said, a comment he directed at lawyers throughout the state. "The conditions that transpire out particularly in the rural counties and elsewhere in Utah are abysmal."

Utah is one of only two states in the country that does not fund indigent criminal defense, instead pushing the responsibility onto individual counties, Harrington emphasized. With no guidance or accountability from the state, their practices for contracting defense attorneys are inconsistent and are not tracked in any meaningful way, leaving the system "in the dark ages," he said.

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An evaluation of legal support provided to Utahns who can't afford their own attorneys has found that the process is inconsistent and unsupported across the state.

The goal of the lawsuit, Harrington said, is to push for a fundamental change in how indigent defense is provided moving forward in order to restore Utahns' trust in the judicial system. It is unclear just how that will happen or what form the system would take, Harrington said.

The lawsuit names six plaintiffs in Tooele, Cache or Carbon counties, all facing criminal charges carrying potential jail or prison sentences and who are currently unable to pay for their own defense. The plaintiffs were identified through public records and were then interviewed by attorneys, Harrington said.

Attorneys behind the lawsuit say the group's experiences represent those of indigent defendants running into systemic failures across the state: representation by overworked public defenders who are difficult to contact, consultation that lasts only minutes just before appearing in court, and a push to quickly accept plea deals from prosecutors in order to simply close the case.

Harrington emphasized that the lawsuit is not meant as a criticism of Utah's public defenders, but of the way the system operates throughout the state.

John Mejia, legal director for the ACLU of Utah, said the lawsuit details "the open and notorious problems" the system has faced for years, including: no caseload limit for public defenders, inadequate funding for investigations and experts, a lack of independence, forced reimbursement by indigent defendants if they are convicted, and a wide disparity of compensation for public defenders as compared to prosecutors.

Mejia cited reports released in October by the Utah Judicial Council and the Sixth Amendment Center that found the state's disparate system woefully inadequate. The ACLU's scrutiny of the system dates back even further, Mejia noted, referring to the 2011 report "Failing Gideon," which analyzed Utah's adherence to standards spelled out in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Gideon v. Wainwright.

"We're not reinventing the wheel, other states have tackled this in various ways," Mejia said. "What we need is to actually start taking meaningful steps toward that fix."

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