Duncan v. State

This case involves a sweeping and fundamental challenge to Michigan’s system for operating and funding legal services for indigent criminal defendants. For decades, this system has, by statute, operated at the local level. But the indigent criminal defendants who are the plaintiffs here (the Duncan plaintiffs) seek to change that. They seek judicial intervention to require the state of Michigan and the Governor to override that statute and to both operate and fund legal services for indigent criminal defendants in Berrien, Genesee, and Muskegon counties, at the ex*344pense of state taxpayers and…