CITING WORKLOAD, PUBLIC LAWYERS REJECT NEW CASES

MIAMI -- Public defenders' offices in at least seven states are
refusing to take on new cases or have sued to limit them, citing
overwhelming workloads that they say undermine the constitutional
right to counsel for the poor.

Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is
high and their pay low. But now, in the most open revolt by public
defenders in memory, many of the government-appointed lawyers say
that state budget cuts and rising caseloads have pushed them to the
breaking point.

In September, a Florida judge ruled that the public defenders' office
in Miami-Dade County could refuse to represent many of those arrested
on lesser felony charges so its lawyers could provide a better
defense for other clients. Over the last three years, the average
number of felony cases handled by each lawyer in a year has climbed
to close to 500, from 367, officials said, and caseloads for lawyers
assigned to misdemeanor cases have risen to 2,225, from 1,380.

"Right now a lot of public defenders are starting to stand up and
say, 'No more: We can't ethically handle this many cases,' " said
David J. Carroll, director of research for the National Legal Aid and
Defender Association.

The Miami-Dade case, which is being closely watched across the
country, was appealed by the state, which says that defender offices
must share the burden of falling revenues. On Friday, the Florida
Supreme Court sent the case to an appellate court for a ruling. If
the judge's decision is upheld, it will force courts here to draw
lawyers from a smaller state office and contract with private lawyers
to represent defendants, at greater expense.

But such lawsuits are just the most overt sign of the burdens that
lead harried lawyers in Michigan to talk openly about "McJustice" and
in New York to make dark jokes about the plea bargain "assembly line."

"In my opinion, there should be hundreds of such motions or
lawsuits," said Norman Lefstein, a professor at the Indiana
University School of Law and an expert on criminal justice.

"I think the quality of public defense around the country is
absolutely deteriorating," Mr. Lefstein said, asserting that unless
states spent more on lawyers, the courts would force them to delay
trials or, as has happened in a few cases, threaten to drop charges
against unrepresented defendants.

The most immediate impact of the rushed justice, Mr. Lefstein and Mr.
Carroll said, is that innocent defendants may feel pressure to plead
guilty or may be wrongfully convicted -- which means the real
offenders would be left untouched. Appeals claiming inadequate
defense are very difficult to win, experts say.

In a 1963 decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, and subsequent cases, the
United States Supreme Court ruled that poor criminal defendants are
entitled to government-paid representation.

Here in the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida, the defenders' office
has had its budget cut by 12.6 percent in the last two years, said
the elected chief defender, Bennett H. Brummer, and the workload has
climbed by 29 percent over the last four years.

State Senator Victor D. Crist, chairman of the Criminal and Civil
Justice Appropriations Committee, is a vocal critic of the Miami-Dade
lawsuit, saying Mr. Brummer is "blowing things out of proportion."

Mr. Crist said the judicial system had faced smaller cuts than other
parts of government. Although no defendant should be denied due
process, he said, the courts, state's attorneys and public defenders
must all tighten their belts. He said defenders' offices could
increase efficiency by, for example, more carefully choosing which
cases require depositions and other time-consuming actions. He said
they should impose fees on clients, even if the sums were low or
payment was delayed.

Legal defense is a right, Mr. Crist said, but "quality education is a
right as well, and proper policing and safety in the community and
maintaining standards in our prisons."

Mr. Brummer countered: "There's a race to the bottom here. As the
loads worsen, the more experienced lawyers leave. But the cases
continue to come in."

This puts defenders like Arthur J. Jones, 30, on a treadmill of
frustration. In his Miami office on a recent morning, Mr. Jones
looked over a printout listing 155 current clients. He spent a
frantic morning in court, handling arraignments and plea bargains for
23 offenders, a majority of whom he had never met before. His cases
involve lesser felonies like cocaine possession, burglary and grand theft.

Mr. Jones, in between hushed conversations with clients in the
hallway or the holding pen, said he wished he had more time to
investigate cases and could go to trial more often, rather than
accepting the police version of events and then, after a short
discussion, helping his clients make a life-altering deal.

"I'd love to have time to visit the crime scene and do more legal
research," Mr. Jones said.

In Missouri, the system has not added staff members in eight years,
while the annual number of cases has grown by 12,000, said J. Marty
Robinson, the director of the state's public defenders. "We're on the
verge of collapse," he said.

Mr. Robinson appealed to an oversight commission, and beginning last
month, defenders in more and more counties are declining misdemeanor
cases and others that are unlikely to result in incarceration.

In Kentucky, the state public advocate, Ed Monahan, filed a lawsuit
that would allow defenders to turn down cases they cannot ethically
handle. "Since Gideon, I don't remember a time when the challenges to
adequate representation have been so great," Mr. Monahan said. In
Kentucky as elsewhere, though, some senior legislators say that
public defenders must share the fiscal pain.

Similar lawsuits are pending, or offices have turned down clients
this year, in Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland and Arizona.

In New York City, financing from the city and state for criminal
defense declined by $2.7 million this year, from a budget of just
over $90 million. Meanwhile, the annual number of cases has climbed
to 226,000, from 210,000 in 2006.

The city's Legal Aid Society is promoting a bill before the City
Council that would set caps on the number of clients each lawyer
could take on. But this would require a significant increase in funds
at a time when both city and state face large budget shortfalls.

The hurried processing of even misdemeanor pleas can have serious
consequences for the accused, noted Deborah Wright, president of the
Association of Legal Aid attorneys, the union for New York defenders.
Even if they get no jail time, such defendants still get a criminal
conviction, which can affect immigration status and some public benefits.

Michigan requires counties to protect the indigent without providing
state funds, resulting in large disparities. In some counties, those
charged with misdemeanors are not even offered a lawyer; in others,
the judge hires one for a flat fee, creating a conflict of interest
and incentives to skimp on defense, according to a recent report by
the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the Michigan Bar
Association. County and state officials acknowledge the problems, but
counties say they cannot fix them without funds from a state
government that is already reeling.

On the positive side, Mr. Carroll of the defender association said
that Nevada, Louisiana and Montana had recently acted to shore up
public defenders.

In Miami, as elsewhere, cases involving serious felony charges,
potentially involving prison terms of decades or life, more often go
to trial. Amy Weber, who has worked in the office for five years,
handles about 50 serious felony cases at one time -- too many, she
said. "The stakes are a lot higher and the cases involve lots of
witnesses, lots more discovery," she said.

On one day in April, Ms. Weber had 13 cases set for trial, so she had
to arrange for delays in all but one. That same day, James A. Simons,
59, who was in jail on child pornography charges, was offered a plea:
one year in prison. Ms. Weber said she simply had no time to discuss
the offer with him, but that he would have accepted it and ended his case.

Not receiving an immediate agreement, prosecutors gathered more
evidence and rescinded the one-year offer. Mr. Simons ultimately had
to accept a five-year sentence. "My client suffered and it makes me
feel terrible," Ms. Weber said. "You try to tell yourself you can
only do what's possible."

Her colleague, Mr. Jones, left his $44,000-a-year job on Monday for
private practice, saying he could not support his children and pay
off school loans on that salary. A few weeks earlier, he had to tell
a 53-year-old man who was charged with grand theft, for stealing a
few locks from a Home Depot, that the state was offering five years
because earlier convictions made him a "habitual offender." In a
discussion in a holding pen, his client asked, "Won't they take one
year?" Mr. Jones went back to the prosecutors, who calculated that
the minimum sentence, under a scoring system here, would be 2.6
years. But Mr. Jones had no time to check their math.

The man was already resigned to taking that sentence when the
prosecutors discovered their calculations were mistaken: the correct
minimum was 366 days.

"You see how easily accidents can happen?" Mr. Jones said. "He easily
could have gotten three years instead of one."