ACLU sues California county and state over public defender caseload
Because of inadequate funding, caseloads for attorneys working in the public defender’s office for Fresno County, California, are so excessive that they cannot do their jobs, alleges a lawsuit filed Tuesday by two American Civil Liberties Union entities and the law firm Paul Hastings.
Assistant public defenders oversee an average of 418 felony cases annually, compared to the 150 or so that they can reasonably be expected to handle, says the complaint (PDF) in the Fresno Superior Court case.
“The attorneys are carrying caseloads that should be handled by three or four attorneys,” Novella Coleman, an ACLU lawyer, told Courthouse News. “It’s physically impossible for them to provide adequate representation to each of their clients.”
Since they are stretched so thin, public defenders can’t adequately represent indigent clients. Simply being present at court hearings doesn’t uphold their speedy trial and due process rights, among other constitutional requirements, the suit says.
“Because Fresno County’s public defense system is not capable of putting the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing, courts cannot ensure that their decisions, judgments, verdicts and punishments are rendered fairly and accurately,” it alleges.
The situation was even worse a couple of years ago, when lawyers in the public defender’s office complained about having to take a “meet, greet and plead” approach to cases because of a lack of staffing, the Fresno Bee reports.
“The office today is in a different position than we were in the dark days of the great recession between 2010 and 2013,” Scott Baly, who heads the Professional Association of County Employees, told the newspaper. “We have since received additional funding, additional staffing, and we have better case coverage than we did, but we still have a long way to go.”
An ACLU press release and stories by the Associated Press and Reuters provide more details.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Federal judge finds 2 cities’ public defender programs deficient; will he OK a federal monitor?”
ABAJournal.com: “Stop-and-frisk project reaches ‘appalling’ conclusion: No right to misdemeanor trial in Bronx, NY”
