Imperiling justice

In October 2005, an outside consulting firm pronounced the Missouri State Public Defender System on the "verge of collapse." The caseload had increased to 88,000 a year, a number that has risen by more than 2,000 cases a year over the past five years. Each year during that period, 20 percent of the corps of public defenders turned over.

During the 1980s under then-Gov. John Ashcroft, the standard public defender caseload in Missouri was 235 per year. Each of the 350 public defenders in the state averages about 305 cases per year. In St. Louis County that average is about 330 a year, a heavy load some blame in part for the city's high crime rate.

Missouri ranks next to last among the states in per-capita spending on its statewide public defender program, which represents 80 percent of all the criminal defendants in the state. The state's system for providing legal defense for poor people is in crisis.

The Missouri Public Defenders Commission has backed off the so-called "nuclear option" of declining to take any more cases until the caseload decreases. That option is indefensible. Defendants in Missouri have a right to representation.

A new bill introduced by state Sen. Jack Goodman of Mount Vernon would allow some misdemeanor cases to be contracted to private lawyers, freeing public defenders to focus on felonies. Approximately 4,000 traffic cases a year are handled by public defenders. Until the system is straightened out, private lawyers could handle some of these cases pro bono.

For fiscal year 2008, Gov. Matt Blunt is recommending a $1 million increase in funding for the Legal Defense and Defender Fund, which pays for training of public defenders and expenses such as travel and expert witnesses. He has recommended nearly half a million dollars to pay for caseload growth and almost $750,000 for an increase in pay to help staunch the turnover, though the increase does not provide for more attorneys. Overall, Blunt recommends a total of $34.6 million for the Office of the State Public Defender in fiscal year 2008, an increase of $2.2 million over the 2007 appropriation.

Dan Gralike, deputy director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, has compared the current situation of public to defenders to physicians operating in a MASH unit. "They perform triage. Defendants facing serious felony charges receive primary attention. Defendants facing less serious charges receive much less."

Most at peril in the current situation is the justice of an overstrained system.