Public Defense Showdown in Missouri News Roundup
We included several stories in our Public Interest News Bulletin last week about the public defense situation in Missouri, but it just keeps getting more exciting. So we thought we’d do another focused news roundup for you (like we recently did on pro se representation).
First, a little background. In 2009, the Supreme Court of Missouri determined that the Missouri Public Defender Commission has the power to determine how to use its limited resources. The Court also concluded that limiting case load is an appropriate response, so the Commission established a rule that allows an office, if it is over its recommended caseload for three months in a row, to refuse to take new cases (after providing notice to the prosecutor’s office and the local presiding judge). This piece from the editorial board at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this past weekend does a good job providing some more background. Another highlight from the 2009 decision is that the “Supreme Court made clear that it ‘expects that presiding judges, prosecutors and the public defender will work together cooperatively.'”
So, this summer, after another year of not receiving any funding increases from the state legislature, many public defender offices around the state started hitting their three months over the recommended caseload (which is in line with the ABA and U.S. Department of Justice guidelines). This led to the Springfield office, which covers three counties in Southwest Missouri, to refuse to take any new cases starting July 22nd until August started. The Missourian has a good article covering this decision and how the state’s system got into crisis mode to begin with. The office in Troy followed suit.
Then, towards the end of last week, the public defender office for St. Louis County warned that it was taking steps to refuse new cases too, setting off some angry reactions from local prosecutor’s office. The Post-Dispatch has some good coverage of this from last Thursday. The chief prosecutor for the county has been particularly vocal, calling the public defender office closings a “contrivance.” This Tuesday, two former public defenders who are now law professors wrote a compelling editorial explaining the different challenges criminal cases present to prosecutors and public defenders.
The Springfield office closing was challenged last week when a local judge assigned a public defender to a defendant after the office announced it would not be taking any new cases. The Springfield News-Leader covered this case, which is being appealed and could potentially wind up back before the state Supreme Court. The News-Leader also wrote this week about the limbo status of those cases brought before the court during the week or so the public defender office was refusing new cases. The office has said that it will not take any of the 24 cases it missed during that window, and so far no local private attorneys have volunteered to serve pro bono.
Today, the president of the Springfield Bar Association wrote an editorial in the News-Leader discussing the need to either reduce incarceration (and thus the need for public defenders), or frankly address ways to increase funding. He ends saying, “our choice is simple: we either increase taxes to incarcerate, or we find ways to reduce incarceration. We cannot have it both ways.”
Finally, last week the Director of Research for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) guest-posted on the American Constitution Society blog last week on this controversy, and provides some more history on the Missouri public defender system. It’s definitely worth reading for some larger historical context.
This is a fascinating conflict that could teach important lessons to many other states whose public defense systems also sit on the brink of catastrophic overload. We will definitely keep an eye on this as news develops.