Recent issues facing public defenders, such as overburdening caseloads and low salaries, have been explored in a new study, released by the RAND Corporation, American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense, National Center for State Courts, and St. Louis lawyer Stephen Hanlon. Public defenders have voted to strike over their salaries, as their caseloads have increased to a level that it may be constitutionally impossible to provide the zealous representation to each client they’re required to.
This report, titled the National Public Defense Workload Study, brings into stark view the inadequacies of existing standards for public defender caseloads. The report’s key findings, quoted from a Reuters article, notes that “50-year-old national standards for public defender caseloads are overly broad and too high to ensure adequate representation of indigent clients” and calls for “more nuanced guidelines”.
The implications of this report could be far-reaching: the average public defender working 2,080 hours annually should only take on a maximum of seven life-without-parole felony cases, according to the study’s guidelines. Otherwise, it is highly probable that the representation they provide for their clients will not meet the constitutional requirement for effective assistance.
In June, the Massachusetts Supreme Court extended the definition of “ineffective assistance” beyond specific case mistakes – attorneys displaying generalized racial bias against their client’s demographic should not be representing them. Could a public defender’s untenable workload be a new ground of ineffective counsel? We see this new perspective in alignment with prevailing ideas to overhaul the public defense system and hopes for the realization of fair and meaningful legal representation as promised by the Constitution.
For more detailed information, please refer to the full study and the article Public Defender Caseload Standards From 1970s Due For Overhaul, Study Says published by Reuters.