Informal Opinion No.

Robert I. Williamson, Esq. County Attorney, Tompkins County

You have asked whether Tompkins County may require a person accused of a criminal offense to repay to the county the costs of providing effective representation of counsel, when that person is indigent at the time of the criminal proceedings but subsequently acquires the means to bear the costs of the legal defense.

In 1965, in response to the Supreme Court decision in Gideon vWainwright (372 U.S. 335 [1963]), New York enacted Article 18-B of the County Law as a statutory scheme for legal representation of indigent criminal defendants,…