The nation's top legal organization has suggested a profound ethical stand be taken by public defenders facing ridiculously high case loads: Just say no.

Public defenders have an ethical obligation to refuse cases if they can't reasonably offer good counsel, the new ethical opinion by the ABA decrees. The realities of the court system likely dictate that such a course of action won't be followed by public defenders in any sort of organized fashion. But we suggest that if things don't get better in Greene County and in Missouri, it's an option they should consider.

In the past five years alone in the state of Missouri, public defenders' case loads have risen by more than 12,000. But state legislators haven't increased the number of public defenders. So just in the past five years, that's an additional 33 cases per public defender.

In Greene County, the very serious jail overcrowding situation is magnified by the lack of public defenders. There are lots of reasons we have jail overcrowding, from lack of judges to the wrong sorts of cases leading to incarceration, but chief among the culprits is the lack of public defenders to even see clients and move their cases through the system with appropriate haste.

It's not like legislators are unaware of this situation, but adding public defenders just doesn't make good election year sound bite material. No, that's reserved for being tough on crime. Passing mandatory sentences. Going after more classes of sex offenders. Putting cops on the streets. Building prisons. These are things legislators like to be proud of. Adding public defenders isn't the sort of thing they take seriously.

The problem, of course, is that their very lack of action could undermine all their tough-on-crime legislation.

Imagine if public defenders take up the ABA on their ethical pledge. When they refuse to take cases, judges will face a very real dilemma. They can force the public defenders to take too many cases and thus create a situation where nobody gets adequate representation; or they can go right along with the gambit and start setting prisoners free. Ultimately, that's the only reasonable solution: We either start providing adequate representation, or we let defendants go, knowing that our system is broken.

Think that might get lawmakers' attention?

They ought to be paying attention right now. A time study being conducted in Greene County ought to provide the ammunition advocates for justice need in next year's legislative session to convince lawmakers that hiring public defenders is a very necessary expense if they want to continue to pass the sorts of laws that bind the hands of judges and call for more prisons. As Justice Black wrote in the landmark 1963 Gideon vs. Wainwright case that guaranteed accused criminals access to a lawyer, "From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him...."

Our accused criminals today have lawyers, but all too often they barely have enough time to know their names.