Public Defender Offices Across the Country Refuse to Take on New Cases
Public defenders' offices in at least seven states across the country have announced that they will soon be forced to refuse to take on new cases. Additionally, several public defenders' offices have sued to limit the number of cases each lawyer in their office is allowed to handle at one time. The public defenders' offices have justified these extreme measures by stating that overwhelming workloads, in conjunction with state budget cuts and a rising number of cases, undermine the constitutional right to counsel for the poor and increase the likelihood that serious mistakes might be made.
Despite the fact that the United States Supreme Court decided in 1963 that economically disadvantaged defendants are entitled to government subsidized representation, many people are in favor of the public defenders' offices decision to limit the number of cases they handle. David J. Carroll, Director of Research for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, supported the office's caseload reductions, stating that, "Right now a lot of public defenders are starting to stand up and say, 'No more: we can't ethically handle this many cases."
One of the first examples of the proposed caseload reductions being put into action occurred in September 2008, when a Florida judge ruled that the public defenders' office in Miami-Dade County could refuse to represent individuals charged with lesser felonies so that public defenders would be free to concentrate their increased attention on more serious felony cases. Similarly, in Kentucky, State Public Advocate Ed Monahan has filed a lawsuit to allow public defenders' offices to turn down cases that they feel they cannot ethically handle. Such lawsuits are also currently pending in Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, and Arizona.
The overburdening of the public defenders' offices is not solely derived from cuts in the budget. A drastic increase in the number of cases yields a much higher number of individuals who will request assistance from the public defenders' office.
In Missouri, the criminal justice system has not added staff members to the state's public defender offices in eight years, despite the fact that the number of cases taken on by the office has increased by approximately 12,000 cases per year. As is the case in Florida, where over the past three years, the average number of felony cases handled by a public defender has increased from 367 to nearly five hundred. The caseload of misdemeanor cases for public defenders has also increased, from approximately 1,380 cases to a staggering 2,225 cases per year.
While Bennett H. Brummer, Elected Chief Defender of the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida, argues that the public defenders' office has been crippled by the 12.6 percent budget cut over the last two years and 29 percent increase in casework over the last four years, Florida State Senator Victor D. Crist disagrees, arguing that Brummer and his colleagues are overreacting. According to Senator Crist, the judicial system has faced much smaller cuts compared to other divisions of the budget. Additionally, because no defendant should be denied due process, Senator Crist believes that the public defenders' offices need to work on increasing efficiency and imposing small fees on clients to cover heightened costs, as opposed to outsourcing their additional cases. In response to Senator Crist's accusations, Mr. Brummer stated, "There's a race to the bottom here. As the loads worsen, the more experienced lawyers leave. But the cases continue to come in."
Problems have also arisen in New York City, where city and state financing for criminal defense was cut by nearly three million dollars, while the number of cases in the criminal justice system increased by about fifteen thousand. In response, New York City's Legal Aid Society is planning to present a bill to the City Council which would set a cap on the number of cases each public defender can handle each year. Unfortunately, in order for this proposition to succeed, an increase in funds is necessary to cover the cost of additional lawyers, which is unlikely to happen due to New York's large budget shortfalls.
The state of Michigan is facing issues of its own, due to its practice of requiring counties to protect the indigent without providing state funds to do so. In some counties, individuals who are charged with misdemeanors are not even offered the services of a lawyer. In other counties, judges outsource the cases at a flat rate, which provides a strong incentive to skimp on an individual's defense. Despite the county and state official's acknowledgement of the problems engrained within the system, the counties say that the problems cannot be fixed without the support of state funds.
Ultimately, the budget cuts and increase in caseloads have pushed too many public defenders to the breaking point, forcing them to realize that taking on so many cases is not only stressful, but irresponsible. Norman Lefstein, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law and an expert on criminal justice argues that the most immediate impact of the shortage of public defenders is that innocent defendants may feel pressured to plead guilty or may be wrongly convicted based on incomplete evidence and an inadequate defense. In addition, once these decisions have been made, they can be very difficult to correct because appeals based on inadequate defense are very difficult to win.
However, not all states have been forced to refuse incoming cases. In order to prevent the office's refusal of potential cases, Nevada, Louisiana, and Montana all recently began hiring additional public defenders to lighten caseloads. Unfortunately, the hiring of additional lawyers may not be a viable option for every state facing an increase in cases due to the nation's ubiquitous budget crisis. At any rate, an alternative to the present system needs to be proposed, for while it is undesirable for public defenders to turn clients away, it is unacceptable for mistakes to be made due to a severely overburdened system.
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