JUSTICE BREAKDOWN

Public Defenders Overloaded; Poor Suffer

An accused person might as well have no lawyer as a lawyer who's juggling
500 other clients.

Effective counsel is impossible when an attorney is that overloaded. Yet,
that is the state of Kentucky's criminal defense system for the poor.

Despite the addition of 10 lawyers last year to deal with the surge in
criminal cases, the workload of public defenders grew even heavier, swollen
by coordinated government efforts to arrest and imprison more drug offenders.

A national standard set in 1973 says a public defender's caseload in a
single year should not exceed 150 felonies, 400 misdemeanors and 200
juvenile or mental health cases.

By the end of last fiscal year, Kentucky's public defenders were handling a
mix of charges and clients that averaged 489 per lawyer.

That was the average. Depending on where they practice, some public
defenders have caseloads well over 500.

Legal ethics require public defenders to refuse new clients when they
become spread that thin. Kentucky's public defenders have yet to take that
drastic step.

But make no mistake; what's happening is a breakdown in justice.

Burnout among public defenders is soaring. Some have gone years without
vacations. Imagine the burden of knowing that, despite all your legal
training, innocent people are probably going to prison because you can't
spare more than a few hours to work on each case.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher's budget provides new funding for public defenders, but
not enough to repair the breakdown. Lawmakers, struggling to reach a budget
compromise and overwhelmed by other unfunded needs, might also be tempted
to underfund legal assistance.

What lawmakers and the administration should remember is that the U.S.
Constitution requires that every person accused of a crime, no matter how
poor or seemingly guilty, is entitled to effective counsel.

That's one of the defining distinctions between our society and
totalitarian regimes. And of all the lines in the state budget, it's one of
the few that's constitutionally mandated.

If a state fails to provide counsel to someone who can't afford a lawyer,
that person cannot be held by the state, according to the landmark Supreme
Court ruling that's come to be known simply as Gideon.

In recent years, we've seen more and more examples of innocent people who
have spent years behind bars before the mistake came to light. The wrongly
jailed are almost always poor.

A system that leaves the poor without effective counsel cannot be called
justice. And a society that tolerates it cannot be called just.