Courts

Public Defender Schedules Are So Swamped It Probably Isn't Constitutional

Doesn't really bode well for a justice system.

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Frustrated hopeless african-american office worker getting fired from job conceptPublic defenders have it rough. Emotional cases, adversaries with a degree of discretion you could only dream of, at a salary worth striking over. But it’s not like they’re so swamped with cases that their ability to give all of their clients a zealous representation approaches mathematical impossibility. Right? Well, you may want to read the recent study released by the RAND Corporation, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense, the National Center for State Courts, and St. Louis lawyer Stephen Hanlon. From Reuters:

The 50-year-old national standards for public defender caseloads are overly broad and too high to ensure adequate representation of indigent clients, according to a study released Tuesday that recommends more nuanced guidelines.
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“The results of this study strongly suggest that the caseloads of public defense attorneys are more excessive than previously thought and that decisive action is needed to ensure that public defense clients receive the effective assistance of counsel required by the Constitution,” read the report, titled the National Public Defense Workload Study.

For years, it has been an open secret that the people fighting the good fight have had the odds stacked against them. Public defenders on average have far less time and resources to devote to their cases than the prosecutors that they are going against. Forgive the bit of Hollywood, but it is hard to understate the difference a public defender with time on their hands can make for their clients.

Hopefully, a study proving that the math isn’t mathing will motivate the changes needed to ensure people — even the broke ones — have the meaningful legal representation the Constitution promises them.

In June, the Massachusetts Supreme Court broadened ineffective assistance of counsel to recognize that attorneys who are racist toward a class of people shouldn’t be representing them. This structural approach was a break from the traditional requirement to prove that the attorney did something specific to the case that was racist. May defendants one day argue ineffective counsel by virtue of their assigned attorney’s work load? For example, here are a few outcomes from the study:

The average hours needed for a life without parole felony case is 286 hours, meaning a public defender working 2,080 hours annually should be capped at seven cases, according to the study. The lowest level of felony has an average of 35 hours and annual caseload standard of 59.

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Assume for the sake of argument that a public defender is given eight without parole felony cases. Without a Time Turner, it is very unlikely that they will be able to give each of their clients the representation they need. Ineffective assistance?

As an aside, it now dawns on me how apropos the time turner example is. They were literally trying to free an innocent man from soul-sucking life imprisonment. Again, forgive the bit of Hollywood.

Public Defender Caseload Standards From 1970s Due For Overhaul, Study Says [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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