St. Lawrence County and 14 more counties and the state’s Association of Counties want the state to take back the responsibility for indigent defendants, a job the state thrust on the counties nearly 50 years ago.

A seven-year-old lawsuit, the Hurring-Harring case, challenging the state to meet obligation imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Gideon v. Wainwright decision in 1963, is about to come to trial. It asks the state of New York to replace the county-by-county patchwork system to provide legal defense to people accused of a crimes and family challenges but who can’t afford an attorney.

Counties have been struggling to find the money and local support for indigent defense services and St. Lawrence County Administrator Karen St. Hilaire, along with officials from 14 other counties, have signed a statement in support of the suit.

The statement asks the state to devise a statewide system that can fulfill the legal obligation imposed by the Supreme Court.

The suit accuses the state of being derelict in this responsibility.

The county has been spending $2 million a year to cover the expense and claims it is the state’s burden’s to bear.

The situation requires that “In place of our underfunded county defender systems - nearly 140 of them, each different in the 62 counties – the State should at long last establish an Independent Public Defense Commission heading a statewide, fully and adequately state-funded public defense system,” according to a statement released Wednesday by the county’s Public Defender Stephen D. Button.

The state Legislature came close in 2009 in nearly passing a bill requiring the state to take over the job, and Button said “Such a system called for by former (state) Chief Judge Kaye and considered by Governor Spitzer and Governor Paterson, is needed to provide the mandated services of the Constitution.

Consolidating the many different defender plans where necessary or creating new state offices to meet the obligations of criminal and family court responsibility is and has always been a State not county responsibility. By beginning this now as part of the settlement, the identified problems in the 5 defendant counties can first be solved; those remedies can then be expanded to the rest of the state, all in a concentrated, planned, collegial manner to eventually accomplish state takeover.”