[420 Girl]

Grandview resident Alice Moore was charged in 2007 with possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in Grandview Municipal Court.

Because she was too poor to afford a lawyer, she asked for the appointment of counsel. The request was denied because Grandview’s policy is to appoint counsel only if the prosecutor has recommended jail time.

Moore pled guilty to the charge on March 24, 2008, and Municipal Judge Donald L. Crow imposed a jail sentence but suspended it and ordered her to pay a fine of $220.

Moore, however, was unable to pay the fine, so Crow converted the sentence to jail time. Moore, a single mother with a young daughter at home, wound up spending five days in the pokey.

Now Moore is suing the city of Grandview and Crow. She said the city’s policy of not appointing counsel where jail time was a possibility violated the due process, right-to-counsel and equal rights provisions of the Missouri Constitution.

The suit appears to be the first time the policy has been challenged.

“Lawyers who work in these places tend to work purely for people who can hire them and don’t take on the cases of people who can’t,” said Moore’s attorney, Fred Slough of Slough Connealy Irwin & Madden. “So it’s no skin off their nose.”

Moore’s lawsuit seeks a court order declaring that appointment of counsel is required in all situations where jail time is a possibility, including those in which incarceration results from the inability to pay a fine. It also seeks unspecified compensation for the time Moore spent in jail.

Grandview officials referred inquiries to the city’s outside counsel, Joseph Gall of Humphrey Farrington & McClain, who said he had glanced at the lawsuit but hadn’t had time to formulate a response.

“We’ll certainly look at the procedure and see if it’s in line with the constitutional right to counsel and criminal rules,” he said.

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...el-denial.html