“Defenseless: Lack of public defenders creates a crisis for indigent clients and increased caseloads for lawyers”

The title of this post is the title of this lengthy feature article in this month’s ABA Journal. Here are some excerpts (with links from the original):

Oregon, like many states, is facing a crisis in public defense because of low pay, excessive caseloads, frequent burnout and a “great resignation” of qualified attorneys that began during the pandemic and shows no signs of ebbing….

The Oregon Project, a 2022 report issued by the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense and created with the accounting firm Moss Adams, estimated that Oregon was short nearly 1,300 attorneys to adequately provide counsel to those accused of crimes in the state.

That report was followed in 2023 by the National Public Defense Workload Study, a national study the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense and others completed with the help of the RAND Corp. that recommended a complete overhaul of national public defender caseload standards….

From the prosecutors’ perspective, the crisis is making their job harder as well, says Charlie Smith, state’s attorney for Frederick County, Maryland, and the immediate past president of the National District Attorneys Association.  Smith believes both prosecutors and public defender offices should be better funded and that more loan forgiveness programs are needed.  “The bottom line is, there’s a shortage of lawyers in public service,” Smith says.  “You have to compete with a smaller pool of law school graduates with large student loans.  A lot of them go into private practice.”…

Other states are feeling the crunch in public defense and trying to address the crisis.  In 2022, the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sued Brown County on behalf of eight defendants whose cases languished for months waiting for assigned counsel — but a judge in September 2023 denied the class action.

Colorado’s Office of the State Public Defender is asking the state legislature for an additional $14.7 million to fund 70 more attorneys and 58 paralegals and support staff — a significant boost, but well short of the 230 total new attorneys the office says will be needed to provide adequate representation based on the National Public Defense Workload Study.

Pennsylvania, which previously had a system of public defense funded exclusively by counties, in early 2024 dedicated the first state funds — $7.5 million in grants — to assist with public defense.  In Missouri, which in the past dozen years has worked to reform its system, a court ordered in 2023 that wait times for assigned counsel — which for almost 600 defendants had lasted more than a year — be limited to two weeks.