Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t

According to this story from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, state laws there cap the caseload of public defenders at 184.5 felonies and 492 misdemeanors per year. It’s not clear whether that means each defender is expected to close almost 600 cases each year, or whether each attorney is expected to do one or the other (the felonies or the misdemeanors). Either way, those caseloads are higher than the loads recommended by the Public Defender Commission in Montana (PDF), which are:

• 50 felony cases (excluding those in which the death penalty is being sought) per attorney at any one point in time;
• 100 misdemeanor cases per attorney at one point in time;

Recommendations are one thing; real numbers are another. As that Wisconsin story indicates, defenders are regularly carrying much higher numbers of cases than the law allows there, and while the same seems to be true here, I haven’t heard of it being quite as bad as things sound in Fond du Lac.

In addition, it appears Wisconsin defenders are unhappy that outdated indigency criteria mean that too many people are denied access to lawyers. Here in Montana the problem seems to be the reverse — the law basically says that anyone can and should be appointed a public defender, regardless of means. After that initial appointment, the public defender’s office is supposed to conduct an indigency test and tell those who have too many resources that they need to find their own counsel. This means that public defenders can end up handling cases that they really shouldn’t be handling, which can deny resources and representation to those who really need it.

Apparently, things could be much worse, as this story from Tennessee makes clear:

During a recent day in Alcoa city court, Garner and his assistants plowed through 50 cases, devoting about 12 minutes to each. That kind of pace makes it hard to provide the quality of service that people deserve, he said.

“I try to do all my work by telephone because we simply don’t have an hour to spare to talk to a person about a case,” he said “I’m not sure all of our clients know what’s going on because everything happens so fast.”

Ouch.