WA: Grant County settles indigent defense lawsuit

Big news from Ephrata / Soap Lake / Moses Lake:

Grant County has settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of providing inadequate public defense — agreeing to do everything from capping the number of cases public defenders can handle to ensuring they don't suffer financially for pursuing a case vigorously.

The settlement allows the county to avoid a trial that was scheduled to begin today. In pretrial rulings a judge already had determined that the county's previous system suffered from "systemic deficiencies" and that its current system had enough shortcomings to create fear that indigent defendants wouldn't be adequately represented.

Settlement provisions include:

• Minimum qualifications for public defenders.

• A case limit of 150 felonies annually per lawyer, plus restrictions on private work defenders do on the side.

• The hiring of one full-time investigator for every four public defenders, a full-time supervisor for defenders and provision of an interpreter for lawyer-client meetings in jail.

• Payment of $350 for each day a public defender is in trial, rather than a limit of payments to a flat fee of $650 per case.

The parties will select a monitor to ensure compliance by the county during the six-year term of the agreement – the first time a county public defense system in Washington will be subject to comprehensive monitoring.

The ACLU's press release is here.