Category — Kentucky

From the Lexington Herald-Leader (KY):

The state finance cabinet is asking for an injunction to block public defenders from withdrawing from cases.

The Department of Public Advocacy began withdrawing from certain types of cases July 1 because of budget cuts. It has sued the state and leaders in the legislature for more funding, saying they have not allocated enough money to fulfill the state’s constitutional mandate to provide lawyers for poor criminal defendants.

By DPA’s own estimates, it has enough money to last through February or March 2009 before running out. Lawyers for the Finance & Administration Cabinet and State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach IV say that gives the legislature or courts five to six months to address the issues raised in the lawsuit.

But Public Advocate Ernie Lewis said it would be irresponsible for the agency to spend money until it goes broke. The public and General Assembly would not stand for that, he said.

”I am trying to manage our way out of a severe budget crisis,“ said Lewis, who noted that Kentucky has one of the lowest-funded public defender systems in the nation.

The executive branch requested the injunction in a response it filed to DPA’s lawsuit on Wednesday.

The answer alleges that:

Public defenders inflate their caseloads by double-counting some cases. DPA, for example, counts cases that move from district to circuit court as two cases. It counts persistent felony offender charges as separate cases.

The agency inefficiently allocates its lawyers and resources. The finance cabinet said attorneys in DPA’s Frankfort office handled, on average, 359 cases each last year, while Lexington lawyers had an average caseload of 654. The cabinet also noted that the agency prints a bimonthly magazine and a newsletter, which the cabinet viewed as unnecessary.

Public defenders do not ask for defendants to pay partial fees to help offset the costs of the agency. Under the law, defendants who can afford to contribute to their defense are required to pay a fee, which is set by the judge and is typically a few hundred dollars. Outside of Fayette County, most counties historically have collected very little in these fees.

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From the Kentucky Herald-Leader:

State public defenders filed a sweeping lawsuit Monday seeking a declaration that Kentucky’s criminal-defense system for the indigent is inadequately funded and unconstitutional.

The Department of Public Advocacy filed a petition in Franklin Circuit Court asking a judge to order the state finance Cabinet to pay for private lawyers in cases where public defenders withdraw because of a $2.3 million budget cut in the fiscal year that begins Tuesday.

In the alternative, public defenders are asking the court to set a deadline for the General Assembly to allocate more money. If the legislature does not provide “sufficient” funds, then public defenders want the courts to dismiss all charges for poor criminal defendants who are denied public defenders.

“Not only are the lives and liberty of some of our most vulnerable citizens at risk, but the fairness, reliability and credibility of the criminal justice process are rightly in question,” Louisville’s chief public defender, Dan Goyette, said in a statement. “We can ill-afford a loss of public confidence in our adversary legal system and with it respect for the rule of law.”

The department’s budget for fiscal year 2008-09 was recently cut by the General Assembly to $37.8 million. Officials say they will be unable to fill as many as 75 positions, including 60 lawyer slots.

Public defenders are asking the courts to allow them to withdraw from cases if their caseloads are too high. The average caseload for a public defender in 2007 was 436, with 23 percent of those being felony cases, according to the lawsuit. Public defenders say that level is excessive.

The lawsuit was filed by lawyers Jon L. Fleischaker, Charles E. English and Sheryl G. Snyder, who has been a legal adviser to several governors. The lawyers are handling the case for free.

“It’s a system that needs to be adequately funded so that there is equal justice for all, including indigent defendants,” Snyder said. “So undertaking the representation as a public service is something I was glad to do.”

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The lawsuit is available here

From Fox17 (Nashville):

Kentucky’s public defenders have gone to court in an effort to force the General Assembly to appropriate more money to pay for the legal defense of the indigent.

The Department of Public Advocacy and Louisville and Jefferson County Public Defender Corp. filed a lawsuit Monday. The plaintiffs are seeking permission to decline additional indigent clients when representing them would create excessive case loads.

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From the Lexington Herald-Leader (KY):

The state’s chief public defender is asking judges to order the state Finance and Administration Cabinet to pay for private lawyers for poor criminal defendants because his agency can no longer afford to represent them.

In a letter to judges released Wednesday, public advocate Ernie Lewis warned that public defenders will begin refusing certain types of cases starting July 1 as a result of the $2.3 million budget cut approved this spring by the General Assembly.

Lewis said the Department of Public Advocacy cannot afford to fill about 40 vacancies. With caseloads already at unethically high levels, Lewis said, public defenders cannot take on additional cases.

“The dilemma that now exists is that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is obligated to provide counsel to poor people charged with crimes, but the legislature has failed to fund that obligation,” Lewis wrote. “DPA will assert that the solution to this is for courts to enter orders requiring the Commonwealth to pay for private counsel.”

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From WAVE (TV):

The very real impact of a bare bones budget is beginning to be felt all around Kentucky. The latest group to face possible layoffs is the state’s public defenders. If you think this is a concern only to criminals, WAVE 3’s Janelle MacDonald says think again.

The Department of Public Advocacy announced this week that because of a $2.5 million budget cut in the next fiscal year, it is cutting 54 jobs — many of them attorneys. Those are the public defenders who are already handling some of Kentuckiana’s most high-profile cases. Lawyers who are an essential part of the justice system.

Gail Coontz, Cecil New and Said Biyad. Imagine being responsible for their entire legal defense. Now add to that hundreds of other cases each year and you begin to get the picture of the job of a public defender. Rebecca Murrell is a public defender in Bullitt, Nelson and Spencer Counties.

“It’s going to be right around 450 cases. Almost all my entire caseload is a felony caseload,” says Murrell

That is far above the American Bar Association’s national standard of 310 cases per lawyer. With expected cuts, Murrell’s caseload — and that of other public defenders — is only expected to get worse.

“You can’t render effective assistance of counsel as required by the constitution and that would lead little alternative but to turn away cases,” Murrell says.

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From wymtnews.com (KY):

Local attorneys say state budget cuts could jeopardize their ability to continue defending people in court.

Brian Hamilton says his life had spun out of control thanks to an addiction to drugs. “I was arrested, drug court came along and gave me the opportunity to change my life,” Hamilton said.

Drug offenders can move from the courtroom back into a productive life thanks to drug court but public defenders say state budget cuts could threaten it.

Brian Hamilton is now a supervisor at a Barbourville business. Many drug court graduates get help finding a job through a social worker program that one local attorney says could be on the chopping block.

“We’re facing some pretty serious cuts,” said Roger Gibbs with the Department of Public Advocacy. State public advocacy officials say if the proposed state budget goes through, thirty attorneys could lose their jobs. They say that would cause a major backlog in court.”

So we would have case loads in excess of national standards and bordering on unethical,” Gibbs said. And that, he says, could have a major effect on defendants. “If we have fewer lawyers, that means fewer jail visits, fewer opportunities to interact with out clients. It means less time to work on some real solutions,” Gibbs said.

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From the Louisville, KY, Courier-Journal:

Prosecutors and public defenders would see their budgets shrink over the next two years, even as the state spends millions to add beds for an expected growth in inmate populations, according to Gov. Steve Beshear’s proposed budget.

Beshear said prosecutors and attorneys with the state Department of Public Advocacy will “have to tighten their belts considerably.”

The budget for public defenders would drop 3.6 percent from current spending, with declines of 2.6 percent for commonwealth’s attorneys and 1.7 percent for county attorneys.

At the same time, Beshear is recommending the legislature approve $39.8 million in bond funds to build an 816-bed expansion at the Little Sandy Correctional Complex in Elliott County, to be opened in 2011.

The state expects the felon population to grow 6 percent over the next two years, an increase of more than 1,000 inmates.

Prosecutors and public defenders said yesterday that increasing room for inmates while decreasing budgets for those who represent and prosecute them makes little sense.

Ernie Lewis, head of the Department of Public Advocacy, said his lawyers are laboring under huge caseloads that far exceed national standards, and they couldn’t handle more cases if budget cuts force him to lay off staff.

“Our belt is already so tight that we have no room for budget cutting,” he said.

Lewis said public defenders may have to decline to represent some poor people charged with crimes.

“We can’t do more cases than we can ethically handle,” he said.

Butler County Commonwealth’s Attorney Tim Coleman, a member of the Prosecutors Advisory Council, said the budget for prosecutors is “at the bone now.”

“Any cut will hurt our effort and the effort of justice in our state,” he said.

Coleman and Lewis pointed out that budget cuts most likely will mean fewer prosecutors and public defenders, since there is little else to trim.

“The offices are all people,” Coleman said.

The group will review the state penal code and sentencing guidelines to look at more appropriate punishments and recommend ways to manage the judicial system, he said.

Beshear said he hopes the task force can have some recommendations by the legislature’s next budget session and perhaps find alternatives to incarceration for some defendants.

Talk about counter-intuitive. Read the entire story.

From the Daily News:

The average number of cases handled by public defenders in Kentucky remains above recommended maximum workloads, leaving public defenders to handle hundreds of cases each year.

That workload has stretched public defenders to the limit, officials say, and severely hampers the criminal justice system.

Additional funding from the state during the 2006 legislative session did help to lower the average caseload from 468.2 per defender in 2006 to 436.3 in 2007, according to Department of Public Advocacy statistics. But a 2005 DPA report recommended that caseloads should never exceed 400 new cases per lawyer per year.

Attorneys in the Bowling Green office have the 11th highest average workload of any office in the state at 421.3 for this year, according to DPA figures. That’s a bit better than in 2006, when the office handled an average of 433 cases.

The office did receive a new attorney through a grant program from the University of Kentucky, said Renee Tuck, directing attorney for the Bowling Green office; if it hadn’t, each public defender in the Bowling Green office would handle 468 cases, she said.

“That is a number I feel would be near impossible to serve properly,” Tuck said. “As it is now, we have the 11th highest caseload in the state, and we have had two new family court divisions and a new district court to serve. This stretches our manpower to the limits.”

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From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Kentucky’s heavy caseloads for attorneys representing indigent defendants are taxing the public defense system and possibly jeopardizing clients’ access to justice, the Department of Public Advocacy’s top official said.

Public defense attorneys in Kentucky on average are juggling about 436 cases per year, according to the agency’s annual report released yesterday. Public defenders in urban areas, however, are facing even fiercer caseloads, as high as 651 in Lexington, the report found.

Still, caseloads are down from an average of 468 per attorney during the 2006 fiscal year, the report found.

The numbers reflect an agency budget crunch that has been years in the making, said Ernie Lewis, who heads the state public defender system. And it could lead to systemwide problems, Lewis said.

“My lawyers are working as hard as they can work, lots of overtime, trying to do the best they can do on individual cases,” Lewis said. “When caseloads get above the national standards, you’re risking systemic problems at that point.”

During the past seven years, there has been an increase of more than 50 percent in caseloads, the report said.

Lewis said the agency is facing a fiscal crisis; he’s already instituted a hiring freeze and has paid bills late as a way to save money. Right now, there are 60 vacancies in the agency, including slots for 30 to 40 additional attorneys.

“I’m looking at a difficult time getting through this fiscal year,” Lewis said.

Sixty-two public defenders in Louisville, Kentucky’s largest urban area, handled more than 33,400 cases during the last fiscal year that ended in June for an average of 539 cases per attorney.

While above the agency’s overall average caseload, the number reflected a drop in Louisville public defenders’ caseloads from the 2006 fiscal year when they had about 604 each, according to the report.

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