4,256 DUI/physical control filings. There were 153 trials, resulting in 31 acquittals, representing a trial rate of approximately 3.6 per- cent and an acquittal rate of approximately 20 percent. See Courts of Limited Jurisdiction, Annual Caseload Report 2007, available at http://www.courts.wa.gov/caseload/clj/ann/2007/annualtbls07_wo_staffing.pdf (last visited Mar. 16, 2009). 172. Nevada Supreme Court Task Force Implementation Committee for the Elimination of Racial, Economic and Gender Bias in the Justice System, Indigent Defense Services in Nevada: Finding and Reccomendations (2000). 173. Nevada Supreme Court Order, available at http://www.nvsupremecourt.us/documents/orders/ADKT411Order.pdf (last vis- ited Mar. 16, 2009). 174. Nevada Performance Standards, Felony and Misdemeanor Trial Cases, Standard 3, available at http://www.nvsupreme- court.us/documents/orders/ADKT411Order01_04_08.pdf (last visited Mar. 16, 2009). 175. Id. , Standard 4. 176. Opinion, Upholding Our Standards Will Mean Reaching Into Our Wallets , R ENO G AZETTE -J OURNAL (May 7, 2008). 177. The Thin Line of Defense , N.Y. T IMES , Video Report, produced by Kassie Bracken and Erik Eckholm , available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/09defender.html?ex=1383973200&en=69517a39c4d1aefb&ei=5124&partner=digg&ex- prod=digg (last visited Mar. 16, 2009). 178. Jan Pudlow, Judge Allows 11th PD to Stop Taking Cases , Florida Bar News (Sept. 15, 2008). 179. ABA Criminal Justice Standards on Pretrial Release, Standard 10-1.1, adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in February 2002, available at http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/standards/pretrialrelease_toc.html (last visited Mar. 2, 2009). 180. Id. at Standard 10-5.1. 181. See id. 182. Id. at Standard 10-5.3 (“Financial conditions other than unsecured bond should be imposed only when no other less restric- tive condition of release will reasonably ensure the defendant’s appearance in court. The judicial officer should not impose a financial condition that results in the pretrial detention of the defendant solely due to an inability to pay.”). 183. W ASH . C RIM . R ULES FOR C OURTS OF L IMITED J URISDICTION , Rule 3.2. 184. Id. 185. See, e.g., Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, Performance Standards and Complaint Procedures, Crim- inal District Court Jurisdiction, § 4.1; § 5.1 (describing duty to investigate and noting that plea negotiations should not occur until “after interviewing the client and developing a thorough knowledge of the law and facts of the case”), available at http://www.public- counsel.net/private_counsel_manual/private_counsel_manual_pdf/chapters/manual_chapter_4_criminal.pdf (last visited Mar. 2, 2009). 186. ABA Criminal Justice Section, Standards on the Defense Function, § 4-4.1, available at http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/stan- dards/dfunc_blk.html#4.1 (last visited Mar. 2, 2009). 187. See id. (“The duty to investigate exists regardless of the accused’s admissions or statements to defense counsel of facts con- stituting guilt or the accused’s stated desire to plead guilty.”). 188. Prosecutors are under tremendous pressure to generate convictions. Conviction percentages, or win/loss records, both for in- dividual prosecutors and for offices, are often used as performance measures, which are reviewed by county and state authorities when considering prosecutorial performance and budgets, and which are also used by individual offices for review and promotion purposes. See, e.g., George Fisher, What Prosecutors Can’t Hold Back, N EW Y ORK T IMES (May 19, 2001), at A13 (noting the “widespread sus- picion” that win loss statistics are used to grant promotions and pay raises); Stephanos Bibas, Plea Bargaining Outside the Shadow of Trial , 117 H ARV . L. R EV . 2463, 2471-72 (2004) (emphasizing that “prosecutors want to ensure convictions” and that the “statistic of conviction … matters much more than the sentence”). This pressure is, in part, to blame for the pressure to plea bargain, as a plea bar- gain counts as a conviction or win, whereas the dismissal of a case counts as a loss. As one prosecutor noted, “When we have a weak case … we’ll reduce to almost anything rather than lose.” Alschuler, The Prosecutor’s Role in Plea Bargaining, supra n. 164, at 59. In misdemeanor court, the prosecutor can actually reduce the charge to almost nothing, in the form of probation, without being criticized, because the nature of the charge is minimal. The defendant, in turn, even if innocent, is under tremendous pressure to accept the plea because, as noted above, the costs of continuing to challenge the charge appear incredibly high in comparison to accepting the small punishment. To fully address the problem, the pressure on prosecutors to avoid dismissals must be alleviated. See American Prosecu- tors Research Institute, Prosecution in the 21st Century: Goals, Objectives, and Performance Measures (2004), at 1-3 (disavowing the use of conviction rates as a performance measure), available at http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/prosecution_21st_century.pdf (last visited Mar. 2, 2009). 189. Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System, supra n. 60, at Commentary to Principle 5. 190. In some cases, defendants arrested for petty crimes are held in jail even when they are incompetent to stand trial because there is no hospital bed available. See Abby Goodnough, Officials Clash Over Mentally Ill in Florida Jails , N.Y. T IMES , (Nov. 15, 2006), at A1. 191. Doris J. James and Lauren E. Glaze, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates , Bureau of Justice Statistics Spe- cial Report (Sept. 2006), available at http://ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/mhppji.pdf (last visited Mar. 16, 2009). 192. ABA Criminal Justice Standards, Providing Defense Services, Standard 5-1.4. 193. Lee Molloy, A Class C Defense, T HE S UN P OST (Sept. 11, 2008). 194. NLADA Defender Training and Development Standards, Standard 1:1, available at http://www.nlada.org/Defender/De- fender_Standards/Defender_Training_Standards#oneone (last visited Mar. 2, 2009). Similarly, national performance standards pro- vide:
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Minor Crimes, Massive Waste
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