LA: SOS

Will the last public defender leaving New Orleans please turn out the courtroom lights? From the Times - Picayune, via Lexis One and The Legal Reader:

Trapped in the courtroom - As indigent defense lawyers vanish, one attorney is left

The Orleans Parish public defender situation is beyond crisis. And it is far past time that the Louisiana Supreme Court intervened.

This summer, changes at the public defender's office resulted in the resignation of a number of attorneys, including two of the three remaining attorneys who handled death penalty cases. Five lawyers had been handling 27 capital cases pre-Katrina... that insufferable caseload then devolved upon the remaining three.

Of the three remaining attorneys, one resigned... Another was reassigned to non-death-penalty cases. That left me...