Defendants on the lower end of the socio-economic scale find themselves at the mercy of public defenders who are swamped with cases, understaffed, and underfunded. Research shows that even before mass incarceration accelerated in the 1980s, overburdened systems of indigent defense struggled to meet the 6th Amendment constitutional mandate. Public defenders usually have the deck stacked against them due to discovery laws favoring prosecutors and lack of sufficient resources.
“The state Supreme Judicial Court on Monday will hear arguments from lawyers for the poor who say they are overburdened with cases. The state Committee for Public Counsel Services this week filed an emergency petition with the SJC to overturn Springfield District Court Judge John Payne’s order to continue taking cases, saying there aren’t enough qualified attorneys in Hampden County.“
Massachusetts Live
June 20, 2019
Read More“The overwhelming majority of the U.S. prison population is made up of poor people. This also creates a back-breaking, mind-boggling burden for public defenders, and in jurisdictions without a public defender office, lawyers who are appointed by judges to represent indigent criminal defendants. With only 60 minutes to an hour and only 24 hours in a day, the sheer volume of criminal defendants assigned to and needing assistance from what few public defenders and appointment-receptive lawyers there are available, an overwhelming workload is created that none of these lawyers can handle and still be able to deliver the reasonably effective assistance that the Sixth Amendment requires.“
Criminal Legal News
May 15, 2019
Read More“High-level felonies carry sentences of 10 years or more and should each get 70 hours of legal attention, according to a workload study. For Mr. Talaska, that’s more than two years of full-time work. Mid-level felonies require 41 hours each. A few of Mr. Talaska’s clients faced life without parole. Such cases, on average, require 201 hours apiece. In total, Mr. Talaska needed to do the work of five full-time lawyers to serve all of his clients.“
New York Times
January 31, 2019
Read More"This civil legal system “crisis”, as advocates call it, has sent states scrambling for solutions. Washington has taken the unusual approach of creating an entirely new legal position, one that can help clients with straightforward legal problems for a fraction of the cost. The new “legal technicians”, the first of whom were licensed in 2015, go beyond a paralegal and don’t need a lawyer’s oversight to offer legal advice."
The Marshall Project
July 18, 2018
Read More"All of this creates a system that extracts guilty pleas (and ever-increasing court fines and fees) from thousands of people each year. Some judges "warn" defendants that asking for an attorney will cause additional delays in case processing. Others promise "better" plea deals for defendants who agree to plead guilty at their first court appearances."
Dallas News
June 29, 2018
Read More"As a result of new cases not going to attorneys, dozens of defendants charged with felony crimes this week will not have a chance to speak to a court-appointed attorney – some for up to seven days while behind bars, something defense attorneys say is the worst-case scenario for clients."
The Spokesman-Review
June 29, 2018
Read More"The chronically underfunded Missouri public defender system has been straining to keep up with growing caseloads. The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision last year to suspend a veteran public defender who had been handling a large caseload and was hospitalized due to chronic health problems only exacerbated the problem."
KCUR Kansas City
June 27, 2018
Read More"People placed on a waiting list are denied their Sixth Amendment right to counsel for an unspecified amount of time. As such, they are forced to languish in pretrial detention or otherwise have their representation unreasonably delayed, often leading them to plead guilty prematurely — even if they are innocent — just so that they can get out of jail and return to their families and whatever may be left of their jobs or careers."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 18, 2018
Read More"The New Mexico Public Defender Commission gathered testimony Monday from local public defenders, national judicial experts and prosecutors as it considers how much work public defenders can shoulder before turning away indigent defendants who face jail time."
U.S. News & World Report
May 21, 2018
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