The long-running legal challenge over Maine's failure to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who can't afford them has reached the state Supreme Court. Arguments before the court today focused on whether the lower court has the authority to order defendants released from jail if they are not provided a lawyer.

Earlier this year Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy ruled that the state was failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide attorneys to indigent criminal defendants. She also decided to hold individual hearings, and if a defendant had not been appointed an attorney in 14 days, they would be released from jail. If no attorney was found in 60 days, the charges would be dismissed.

But attorneys for the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services and the Attorney G

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