NV: "I can't remember him ever going to trial"

Private indigent defense contractors going for the gravy, from the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Nye experience highlights system flaws

If not for Henderson defense attorney David Neely, some court proceedings in Nye County might come to a standstill. The county so relies on Neely to take indigent cases that he earned $150,000 in fees during a recent one-year period. That was without ever going to trial...

Though the state created a public defender office for rural counties in 1971, it pays for only about 20 percent of the indigent cases in those counties. In fact only four counties and Carson City even use the office... David Carroll, research director for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in Washington, D.C., puts it simply: "The state system (in Nevada) is failing..."

Citing concerns over cost, quality, and turnover rate, Nye County left the state public defender system in 1993. At the time, one lawyer covered the entire county, which is the third largest geographically in the continental United States. Currently, Nye employs a four-lawyer firm based in Pahrump on a flat-fee $490,000-a-year contract for an unlimited number of indigent cases.

The contract violates several American Bar Association guidelines for indigent defense delivery. It doesn't provide allowances for travel or hiring of investigators, nor does it limit the amount of privately retained work the firm may do. No extra compensation is paid for work on serious felony cases such as murder and sexual assault. "The contract's enough to pay the rent and bills, and then we can go for the gravy, which is the private work," said Jason Earnest, the firm's head lawyer...

Link via Harmful Error, "Rural counties struggle to provide defense for indigents"