able to provide clients with appropriate assistance. The Na- tional Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals set the following caseload limits for full-time pub- lic defenders: 150 felonies, 400 misdemeanors, 200 juvenile, 200 mental health, or 25 appeals. 76 Established more than 20 years ago, these standards have withstood the test of time as a barometer against which full-time indigent defender case- loads may be judged. Similarly, in 2007, the American Coun- cil of Chief Defenders (“ACCD”) issued a “Statement on Caseloads and Workloads” recommending that defenders handle no more than 400 misdemeanors per year. 77 Caseloads should never surpass the maximum caseload standards. In fact, there are a variety of reasons that case- loads should be lower than the standards propose. For ex- ample, the standards assume that the defender is a full-time litigator. Accordingly, any administrative responsibilities allocated to the defender should reduce the expected max- imum caseload. Similarly, the caseload standards assume a relatively close proximity between the defender and the courthouse. Any significant distances that must be traveled by the defender in the course of his or her work should re- duce the expected caseload. The caseload standards also assume appropriate levels of support services. In other words, they assume that the at- torney has access to secretarial assistance, paralegal assis- tance, basic workplace technology, legal research, and investigatory services. For full-time defender offices, the Bureau of Justice Assistance has opined that there should be approximately one paralegal, one secretary, and one inves- tigator for every four attorneys. Offices that do not maintain the recommended ratios of support staff to attorneys must reduce their workload expectations for attorneys. 78 For these reasons, the ACCD further recommended that each jurisdiction review its situation and amend the standards as necessary, noting that “the increased complexity of prac- tice in many areas will require lower caseload ceilings.” 79
Despite these standards, across the country, lawyers who are appointed to represent people charged with misde- meanors have caseloads so overwhelming that they liter- ally have only minutes to prepare each case:
During the webinar, the acting director of the office reported that, in New Orleans, part-time defenders are handling the equivalent of almost 19,000 cases per year per attorney, which literally limits them to seven minutes per case. In at least three major cities, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami, defenders have more than 2,000 misdemeanor cases each per year. 80 According to a response to the survey, in Dallas, Texas, misdemeanor defenders handle 1,200 cases per year. One attorney working in federal magistrate court in Arizona reported in a survey response that misde- meanor attorneys there carry 1,000 cases per year. In response to the survey, one Tennessee defender re- ported that the average misdemeanor caseload per at- torney in his office was 1,500 per year. Two other defenders in Tennessee reported handling 3,000 mis- demeanor cases in one year, which is 7.5 times the na- tional standards. In Kentucky, the defenders were assigned an average of 436 cases per lawyer in fiscal year 2007, of which 61 percent were misdemeanors. 81 In other words, each defender had 170 felonies, which is more than a full caseload for one attorney, plus 266 misdemeanors, which by itself is two-thirds of a full-time caseload under the national standard.
21
Misdemeanor Caseloads By Jurisdiction
400
National Caseload Standard
2403
Chicago
927
Grant Co. , Washington
2232
Miami-Dade
1200
Dallas
2500 18,720
Utah
New Orleans, Louisiana
Problems
The Terrible Toll of America’s Broken Misdemeanor Courts
Made with FlippingBook Online document maker