Maine’s highest court has denied the state’s attempt to halt an upcoming trial that will focus on Maine’s inability to find enough attorneys to represent hundreds of low-income criminal defendants.

The Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which has been renamed to the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services, has been battling a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine over this crisis for more than two years.

The ACLU’s original complaint in March 2022 alleged the state was violating the constitution by failing to provide poor Mainers with effective court-appointed legal counsel. The lawsuit focused on the commission, the state agency tasked with overseeing private attorneys doing indigent defense. It argued the commission was failing to ensure lawyers were spending enough time with their clients.

But in the years since, the question has expanded beyond effective representation to any representation at all – there are hundreds of Mainers for whom the court and the commission have not been able to find attorneys for.

Superior Justice Michaela Murphy denied several proposed settlement agreements between the parties, arguing they were turning a blind eye to a growing crisis. In February, she ordered that they prepare for a trial in June and the ACLU asked to add the governor and the attorney general as defendants. A trial date has not yet been set.

An attorney for the state appealed Murphy’s order to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court shortly afterward.

Assistant Attorney General Sean Magenis argued Murphy had “abused (her) discretion in determining that the parties proposed settlement agreement was not a ‘fair, reasonable, and adequate’ resolution of the claims” in the ACLU’s original lawsuit.

In a May 1 order, Associate Justice Andrew Horton said the appeal did not merit the high court’s consideration because there has been no final judgment. He said even if the court vacated Murphy’s order, it wouldn’t force their latest settlement to be approved.

Horton also said the order doesn’t deprive the state agency of any rights or present a “major or unsettled question of law” that would warrant the high court’s consideration.

This story will be updated. 

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A real estate development conference Wednesday in Portland will focus on housing. Maine continues to suffer from a shortage of supply. That has pushed both home prices and rents higher. Expensive land, high construction costs and high interest rates make it harder to build affordable housing in many parts of Maine. Some of those factors have also faced New Orleans architect Jonathan Tate, who will be the keynote speaker at Wednesday’s Maine Real Estate and Development Association conference in Portland.

Tate spoke with Morning Edition Host Irwin Gratz about overcoming those challenges.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jonathan Tate: What we often say it’s like the parts of the city that you move to New Orleans to live in, or the parts that were getting too expensive to live.

Irwin Gratz: So how did you overcome some of them?

One approach was looking for land or parcels of land that didn’t appear to be developable, but in our estimation, we thought you could put housing there. And so that’s what we work towards. And no one else was interested either. So we thought we’d give it a shot.

Were you able to hold down construction costs by using different material?

Yeah, definitely. Construction costs are one part of the equation. And we work to make those as tight as we can, or as low as we can. Part of that is through materiality. But where we really focus was just looking at the size of the house, what’s the overall cost of it just relative to how much of a house you’re building. And we think that’s where design comes in. Even if it’s an efficient floor plan, but a livable space, it doesn’t need to be as big as a typical home, let’s say. So material was a big part of that. But I would also say the other part of the equation is land cost, right. And in New Orleans, that number was going up, especially in the areas where we’re looking, you know, astronomically higher than housing in some ways. And finding land that’s less expensive in locations you want to live was really what we were trying to do as well.

In Portland, particularly on the city is also trying to attack this problem by telling developers of housing, you have to either set aside a certain percentage of housing to be at below market rates, or you have to pay into a fund. Have you run into anything like that before and is that helpful?

It’s referred to as inclusionary zoning. We have those provisions in New Orleans, it has not stopped development in New Orleans, people still make housing. And it may complicate some of the financials around certain projects, especially ones that are are challenging to begin with. But it hasn’t slowed down anything we’re doing here and it’s been in place for a number of years now. In other areas in the country that we work in it’s it’s often a similar provision. And as I say, it’s something that just gets calculated and adopted as part of the part of how you work in a city.

Do you design homes specifically to be more affordable? Or do you find it easier or beneficial to build higher end dwellings and realize that at some level, any contribution to the housing stock is going to be helpful in a tight market?

Yeah, I agree with both of those sentiments actually, it’s like, I’m a firm believer in the, you know, more housings better across the board. And, you know, there’s data that proves that, I would say in terms of the work that we do, if it’s work that we’re developing on our own, which we do on occasion, I would call it sort of middle market housing, not necessarily affordable, which often means that there’s some subsidy or some assistance in terms of how it’s financed. And we don’t do a lot of high end housing either. And could be people just aren’t asking us to do it. So it’s not not out of any proclivity on our part necessarily. It’s just the nature of the work that we do. But I would say in all instances, is like there’s, there’s always an eye towards, like, how can we make something that is attainable and accessible to as many people as we can? And that’s the ethos, I think in the work that we tried to produce.

The Maine Nordiques season came to a screeching halt.

The Maryland Black Bears scored six unanswered goals in Game 5 in a 6-2 victory to capture the NAHL East Division championship over the Nordiques at the Piney Orchard Ice Arena in Odenton, Maryland.

“I think momentum is a huge thing at this level, and that’s something I’ve learned in my first season,” Maine Nordiques first-year coach Nick Skerlick said. “I’ve seen leads evaporate pretty quickly.”

Maryland will represent the East Division at the Robertson Cup this weekend in Blaine, Minnesota.

Kareem El Bashir scored twice in the victory.

Maine found success late in the first period when J.P. Steele and Nick Ramm scored on Maryland goalie Owen Lepak for a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes.

“Nick Ramm capped off an amazing junior career with an exclamation point on an excellent shot, on probably the strongest goalie in the division throughout the season,” Skerlick said.

David Helledy, Charles Tardif, Zion Green, and Kellen Murphy had the assists on Maine’s goals.

Midway through the middle frame, Dimitry Kebreau and Riley Ruh tied the game for the Black Bears.

El Bashir scored the eventual game-winning goal late in the second period for a 3-2 lead.

“Those three mistakes we made in the second period, Maryland didn’t earn; we kind of gave them,” Skerlick said. “When you spot a team — of I don’t know what it is — lack of focus, lack of preparation, you are going to get that result in the third period.”

Jeremi Tremblay and El Bashir scored 23 seconds apart early in the third period. Trayce Johnson capped the scoring nearly four minutes into the final period.

Lepak earned the win in goal for Maryland, while Carter Richardson started for Maine, giving up all six goals before getting pulled for Thomas Heaney.

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