Washington State Has a Public Defense Crisis
2mon 4d ago by feddit.online/u/CombatWombat in washington from www.thestranger.com
You’ve seen Law & Order. You’ve heard the Miranda Rights. You know that if someone charged with a crime cannot afford an attorney, all US states have a constitutional obligation to provide one. But, because of the backwards way we fund it, the public defense system in Washington has been destitute for decades.
Complicating things further, last year the Washington State Supreme Court set new caseload standards, stating that public defenders could only take on a fraction of the cases they currently see now, which will make it impossible to cover everything that needs covering with current staffing levels. That creates a new monetary problem and a constitutional crisis.
Ah yes, leave it to the State Supreme Court to overturn decorum, state constitution and break whatever else gets tossed their way because no one is ever going to vote their super majority out.
If I'm honest (and given the fact that I saw a stat somewhere years ago about how public defenders are so overworked that on average they spend on 7 minutes on each case outside of the court room), I think rolling back/limiting the number of cases that a public defender can take on will be good for those lawyers and their clients, but it also goes to show that the system is so broken that there just aren't enough qualified people to do the job/take on clients, and that's what needs to be fixed.