State v. Perez
Annotate this CaseOn May 8, 2012, legislative amendments to the Indigent Defense Act (IDA) became effective. The amendments override the Supreme Court’s construction of the prior version of the IDA by precluding an indigent defendant in a criminal action from retaining private counsel while requesting public defense resources from the government. In the instant criminal case, Defendant was charged with object rape, a first-degree felony. Defendant retained private counsel and, in April 2012, filed a motion requesting the provision of government-funded defense resources. The district court granted the motion, concluding that Defendant was entitled to the pre-amendment of the IDA applied because Defendant was entitled to the version of the IDA in effect at the time he filed his motion requesting defense resources. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the pre-amendment version of the IDA should apply in this case because the conduct being regulated by the IDA is the exercise of a mature right to indigent defense resources, and the law in effect at the time that Defendant exercised that mature right was the unamended version of the IDA.
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