By CLAIRE RUSH, Associated Press/Report for America
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — District attorneys in Oregon are once more sounding the alarm over the state’s critical shortage of court-provided attorneys for low-income defendants. The dearth of public defenders has strained the criminal justice system and left greater than 700 people statewide without legal representation.
Judges in Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, have dismissed nearly 300 cases this yr as a result of a scarcity of defense attorneys capable of handle cases. The county’s top prosecutor, Mike Schmidt, said that the shortage poses “ an urgent threat to public safety ” and released a tally this week of dismissed cases. He pledged to release recent numbers each week to attract attention to the crisis.
Greater than two-thirds of the dismissed cases are felonies; in 53% of them, property crime was the first charge. The subsequent commonest primary charge was for weapon crimes, which accounted for 16% of dismissed felonies, while person crimes, which include assault and robbery, accounted for 12%.
“Months into this crisis, many are still waiting for his or her day in court while others have seen their cases dismissed altogether,” said Schmidt, a progressive prosecutor who was elected in 2020 on a platform of criminal justice reforms. “This sends a message to crime victims in our community that justice is unavailable and their harm will go unaddressed. It also sends a message to individuals who’ve committed against the law that there isn’t a accountability while burning through scarce police and prosecutor resources.”
Political Cartoons
The statement reflects an increasingly popular tactic utilized by prosecutors in Oregon. Powerless to repair the issue on their very own, they’ve tried to force the state’s hand. Earlier this month, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said that his office would seek a court order requiring the state’s public defense agency to appoint its own staff attorneys to represent defendants if no other attorneys were available.
The pinnacle of Oregon’s public defenders’ office said that she would work with Schmidt “to handle this systemic access to justice emergency.”
“Public defense is a critical component of the general public safety system,” Jessica Kampfe, executive director of the Office of Public Defense Services, said in an email, adding that “public defenders need significant investments to retain existing staffing levels and increase capability.”
As of Wednesday, statewide there have been 763 low-income defendants who lack legal representation, in line with the state Judicial Department.
The Oregon Legislature is ready to tackle the problem when the following session begins in January. A working group that features lawmakers has been meeting for months and considering major reforms that would overhaul the system. One proposal would reassign the Office of Public Defense Services from the Judicial Department, where it’s currently housed, to the governor’s office, in response to criticism of conflicts of interest.
Oregon’s system for providing attorneys to criminal defendants who cannot afford them has shown cracks for years, but case backlogs have significantly worsened because the coronavirus pandemic. The general public defender shortage has overwhelmed the courts, frustrated defendants and impacted crime victims, who experts say experience more trauma when cases are dismissed or take longer to be resolved.
The state has been sued twice this yr for allegedly violating defendants’ constitutional rights to legal counsel and a speedy trial. While the unique lawsuit was dismissed, an analogous second suit was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court last month.
An American Bar Association report released in January found that Oregon has only 31% of the general public defenders it must run effectively. Every existing attorney would need to work greater than 26 hours a day through the work week to cover the caseload, the report said.
Oregon’s public defense system is exclusive in that it is the just one within the country to rely entirely on contractors. Cases are doled out to either large nonprofit defense firms, small cooperating groups of personal defense attorneys that contract for cases or independent attorneys who can take cases at will.
The general public defender shortage is “the predictable final result” of the unique contracting system, said Jon Mosher, deputy director of the Sixth Amendment Center. In line with Mosher, the contracting and subcontracting of public defense services makes it difficult for the state to trace which attorneys are assigned to which cases.
“On any given day, the state of Oregon cannot know literally the identity of the lawyers providing the services, which suggests that Oregon cannot know whether those lawyers are qualified to handle the cases or whether or not they have enough time to handle their cases effectively,” he said. “That creates an enormous amount of … a scarcity of oversight, a scarcity of accountability.”
Public defenders say that uncompetitive pay, high stress and overwhelming caseloads also affects staffing levels.
“You’re being asked as a public defender to be a lawyer, a social employee, a counselor, an investigator,” said Carl Macpherson, executive director of Metropolitan Public Defender, a big nonprofit public defender firm in Portland. “The criminal legal system doesn’t help individuals with severe issues. It’s a short-term punitive response to a much bigger issue.”
Macpherson said that the crisis extends beyond the general public defense system and includes “multiple system failures.”
“It doesn’t just affect the individuals which might be without representation,” he said, before mentioning victims of crime, prosecutors, police and the general public. “It affects everyone.”
Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Claire on Twitter.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material will not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
