MO: it is what it is

Early entry for headline of the year, from Missourinet:

System for people who can't afford to hire lawyers can't afford to hire lawyers

MO: p.d. system "on verge of collapse"

It's the swaths that'll kill ya, from the Springfield News-Leader:

Public defenders to reject some cases - Overwhelmed attorneys will turn away swath of clients

On Wednesday, public defenders in Springfield and elsewhere in the state will begin to refuse cases. People accused of violating the terms of their probation could be ineligible for a defender. And indigent defendants charged with certain collections and traffic crimes won't get a public attorney. The change will mark the first time since the birth of the Missouri Public Defender System that defenders will turn away whole swaths of clients...

Via the Missouri Bar (with podcast)

Update: from KSPR, You Have the Right to an Effective Attorney … Maybe?

Badgering the witness

Much obliged to Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer for this illustration:
"Badger, badger, badger..."

MO: P.D. TDY

Hard enough running a state's public defender office when you're physically there; imagine how it must be when you're in Baghdad. By way of the Columbia Missourian, after first passing through Public Defender Stuff:

Public defender chief on duty in Iraq - He awaits word on a $2 million increase in funding for the agency from the state.

MO: state's chief p.d. Baghdad-bound

Director of Missouri's State Public Defender Agency is Headed to Iraq

J. Marty Robinson, the Director of Missouri’s State Public Defender System, is being deployed to Iraq. In addition to his duties as Missouri’s top Public Defender, Robinson is also a colonel in Missouri’s National Guard and serves as Missouri’s State Judge Advocate. Once deployed, Robinson will be attached to the 43rd Military Police Brigade in Baghdad as their Command Judge Advocate. The 43rd is responsible for theatre detention operations in Iraq. As the Command JAG, Robinson will be the senior advisor to the commander on legal issues concerning detainees...

Robinson’s departure comes at a difficult time for the agency he oversees. An independent study commissioned by the Missouri Bar concluded that Missouri’s public defender system is "on the verge of collapse" due to case overload and skyrocketing turnover rates in its attorney staff...

Cathy R. Kelly, the system’s Deputy Director for Training and Communications, will serve as Acting Director for the agency until Col. Robinson’s return...

MO: M*A*S*H p.d.

I see that other people use this analogy to describe what we do; from the editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Meatball surgery

Last fall, a young lawyer earning $33,700 a year as an assistant public defender in a medium-sized Missouri county took a second job to help pay off his law school loans. The job he took was delivering pizza.

One night, he tucked a hot pizza under his arm, drove to a customer's home and rang the bell. When the door opened, there stood one of the defendants he'd been assigned to represent in court.

"The guy's mother called us and was very upset," said Cathy R. Kelly, director of training and communications for the Missouri Public Defender's Training Division. "She said she wanted her son to have a real lawyer, not a pizza guy..."

See also Rights on the verge of collapse, with "grave doubts that Missouri is meeting the constitutional standard of providing effective counsel to the poor."

Mo p.d. crisis

Crisis looms in the public defender system - Staggering case loads mean some may not get fair representation:

A recent study found that the Missouri Public Defender System is on the verge of collapse.

J. Marty Robinson, the director of the state public defender system, does not disagree...

Too many cases, too few defenders - State ranks 47th in spending on its public defender system:

Outside organizations like the Missouri Bar Association are pushing the public defender's office to do something about what they believe is a crisis. Spiraling case loads have exceeded the capacity of the legal system, and it is no longer certain that indigent clients are getting adequate representation.

"There are two ways to fix it," said State Public Defender J. Marty Robinson. "Either there's not enough people (attorneys) or there are too many cases. If we had fewer cases we wouldn't have a problem."

Time for a supply-side solution - let's try the filing-fewer-cases approach for a change.

(I'm a bit bummed this evening: I'm in trial in a case where my client was charged with three Class C felonies, and once he rejected the state's offer, the prosecutor thought it would be just to upgrade one of the counts to a Class A violent strike offense. Justice.)

MO: p.d.'s underfunded

Public defense system in dire state, report says:

Statewide, the Missouri public defender system is in crisis from a lack of funding, according to a report by the Spangenberg Group...

Salaries are “pathetic,” with public defender trial attorneys earning from $33,792 to $52,452. By contrast, state prosecutors typically earn from $40,000 to more than $100,000...

The cumulative turnover rate for public defenders over the past five years was nearly 100 percent and “exceeds that of any other public defender system in our experience,” the study’s authors said.

“If public defender salaries aren’t increased and workloads decreased, it is only a matter of time before the criminal justice system crashes,” Jackson County Public Defender Joel Elmer said. “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

There is something wrong, he said, when some of the best and most experienced defense lawyers “barely make half of what brand-new lawyers make at the big firms.”

Tikkun olam

Public defender strives to give clients ‘cloak of humanity’

Four years ago, attorney David Bell worked at a Kansas City civil law firm and made profitable use of his costly East Coast education. Then, to the shock of family and friends, he quit his $82,000-a-year job to become an assistant Jackson County public defender...

Bell said he left because he wanted more contact with clients, wanted to see more immediate results of his work and wanted to try cases. “I always had an interest in getting in front of people,” he said. “I once thought of becoming a rabbi...”

His job is to take people “who are viewed as subhuman or animal and make them appear as they are, which is human beings, to put that cloak of humanity back on them...”

There is always something to argue in defense, he said. It all goes back to a spark he sees in the eyes of almost anyone, he said, a spark called humanity, soul, God, or whatever you want to call it.

Even if that spark is not there, he said, “I’ll be able to say what possibly could have happened to this human being to extinguish the spark...”

Go you and do likewise.

More empathy for BTK's advocate

That Lawyer Dude pays me a huge compliment, but the rest of his latest post is trustworthy.

He was prompted to write by a post about Sarah McKinnon, a public defender who represented the BTK killer, who said,

"I've seen things I never wanted to see. I have information I never wanted, and I have things inside of me that I don't want ... but it's stuff I have to keep until the day he dies."

My heart went out to her. So did That Lawyer Dude's. He's been there too:

One day the case ends. The excitement, the worry, the noise and the rest ends. But not for you. You still linger with questions. Did I do the best that I could? Could I have done something different that would have changed the outcome? Was I the right one for this case?... Maybe you have haunting memories of what was in the autopsy, a picture of a victim. Hearing the victim scream into a tape machine as she is being bludgeoned to death. The PD that defended the BTK killer was a person... But first she is a Lawyer, a Trial Lawyer. That means that she is about to undergo a decompression, a disappointment, even despair. She has stood where no other dared to stand. Next to a serial murderer, in protection of his rights under the Constitution of the United States of America. Believe me when I say that you may revile the BTK murderer, but pray for his lawyer...

Today after day one of my Class-C felony trial, I came back to the office and learned that an in-house murder was re-assigned to my two co-workers on either side of my work station. They were excited; I hope they'll be okay. Secretly, I breathed a little sigh. I don't care if I never go back to murder defense.