People being held in the Penobscot County Jail may be released as early as June if the legal system fails to find them a lawyer.
Habeas corpus hearings are scheduled for June 24 in Penobscot County to determine if people accused of crimes are being detained unlawfully without a lawyer. As of Wednesday, 10 people are being held in the county’s jail without a lawyer, according to a list maintained by the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services.
Maine has violated the constitutional rights of indigent defendants, low-income people who are guaranteed a court-appointed lawyer, Kennebec County Superior Justice Michaela Murphy ruled in March.
June’s hearings in Penobscot County will be the first test of new court orders to remedy the ongoing constitutional crisis in the state. The hearings may release people from custody who have waited weeks for a lawyer.
A similar set of hearings will happen July 1 in Androscoggin County for people in custody there. No hearings are scheduled for other counties at this time.
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The indigent defense crisis led to a class action lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. An order from Murphy outlines the steps to fix the violations of people’s constitutional rights as they are left waiting without a lawyer.
Those hearings will address the “government’s failure to follow the rules” by holding people indefinitely without lawyers, said Zachary Heiden, the chief legal counsel for ACLU Maine.
“We expect the court, or the government, to either follow the rules and provide people with counsel or order those people released,” Heiden said.
Maine had more than 900 indigent defense adult criminal cases pending without a court-appointed lawyer at the end of 2024. There are more than 350 cases as of Wednesday.
The Maine Commission on Public Defense Services has an annual budget of around $51 million for 2026, Maine Public reported.
An additional $3.5 million was allocated by the Legislature to help the public defense crisis after an emergency law took effect in April. It will allow the hiring for five new public defenders and allow judges to pay private attorneys through February 2026 to take on indigent defense cases, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The money spent by the Legislature to ensure people have lawyers has “done little to remedy the situation,” Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy said.
Penobscot County has 81 cases in need of legal counsel, while the counties with the next highest amounts, Androscoggin and Cumberland, have 51 cases each, according to the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services. That difference is because there are more lawyers willing to take cases in the southern part of the state, Almy said.
One person in Penobscot County has been in custody since April 2 without a lawyer, which is the longest stint for someone in custody on the list from Maine Commission on Public Defense Services.
The judge’s order mandates the release of someone from custody if they spend 14 days without a lawyer. People not in custody who wait 60 days for a lawyer will have charges dismissed without prejudice, and there needs to be legal counsel available before the government can refile charges.
After the initial 14 and 60 days, a habeas corpus hearing is held and there are seven additional days for legal counsel to be secured before someone is released or charges are dismissed, according to the order.
There will be bail conditions set for people released from custody.
The courts order people released from jail daily, for various reasons, and the impact of the June 24 hearing will likely be minimal for the Penobscot County Jail, Sheriff Troy Morton said.
“However, there are concerns about the potential release of individuals who may pose a danger to the community, as there have been instances in our state where citizens have faced harm due to such actions,” Morton said.
Almy called the upcoming habeas corpus hearings “an unfortunate situation.”
“The public suffers because their prosecutors are unable to hold dangerous criminals accountable for unlawful conduct,” Almy added.
At the end of the day, the U.S. Constitution says people are entitled to legal counsel and hundreds of people in Maine are without that right, Heiden said.
“We all have an interest in a functioning criminal legal system,” Heiden said. “It’s designed to make sure people who commit crimes are punished and people who are innocent are set free. But the system only works if both sides are represented by lawyers.”
