Judge Hears Testimony on Overworked Public Defenders Office

    March 23, 2007
    The Times-Picayune
    By Michael Kunzelman

    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An overwhelming caseload prevents the city's public defenders from adequately representing poor defendants, a top official from the public defender's office testified Friday before a judge who already has released several inmates from jail due to the backlog.

    Stephen Singer, who was named lead trial counsel for the public defenders office in August 2006, said the office was overworked and wasn't effectively representing indigent clients before Hurricane Katrina. The Aug. 29, 2005, storm only exacerbated the problem, he added.

    "We're getting better, but it's going to take a long time to fix everything," Singer said.

    Singer testified before District Judge Arthur Hunter, who is holding hearings on the state of the short-staffed and underfunded public defenders office.

    In October 2006, Hunter ordered the release of four inmates from a city jail and postponed their trials, saying their constitutional right to adequate legal counsel was being violated.

    Hunter, who has threatened to release more inmates, is now weighing the fates of at least 50 defendants whose cases are pending in his courtroom. Hunter gave prosecutors and public defenders until Wednesday morning to present written arguments. He said he expects to rule Thursday or Friday.

    Singer told Hunter on Friday that 12 public defenders were handling at least 1,371 cases in Orleans Parish's criminal district court as of Nov. 9, 2006, an average of 114 cases per lawyer.

    The public defenders office also had 371 cases in magistrate court and were handling at least 1,153 "unaccepted" cases, in which defendants had appeared in court but prosecutors hadn't filed a bill of information or bill of indictment against them, Singer added.

    In addition to those 2,895 cases, six public defenders were handling more than 1,800 cases in juvenile court last year, according to Singer. But that "snapshot" of the office's caseload is likely underestimated by thousands of cases, he added.

    The Louisiana Indigent Defense Assistance Board sets limits on how many cases a public defender should handle annually, but Singer said even the most conservative caseload estimates suggests his office was falling "woefully short" of meeting those limits after Katrina.

    "It's so far from best practices or even minimally or constitutionally adequate representation ... I can't even fathom it," he said.

    The public defenders office has three part-time investigators for more than 2,900 cases and relies on a handful of college student volunteers to help investigate cases, Singer added.

    James Boren, an attorney and member of the indigent defense board in Baton Rouge, said the Legislature's chronic underfunding of public defenders leaves judges like Hunter with no choice but to halt prosecutions.

    "The state of Louisiana has the obligation to fund the defense of indigent defendants and they have simply abandoned that," he said. "You can't hold the Legislature in contempt, you can't make them give you the money."

    Hunter also heard testimony from Richard Bourke, acting director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, a state-contracted group that is helping New Orleans public defenders represent defendants charged with capital crimes.

    Bourke said public defenders in capital cases are "practicing without a net" in New Orleans, with little help from overworked investigators and not enough time to interview witnesses or document evidence.

    "They simply had overwhelming caseloads with no resources with which to meet those minimum standards," he testified.

    Bourke said he identified five instances in which indigent defendants charged with capital crimes didn't even have a case file even though their case was at least three years old.



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