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She starts by saying Kansas’s “public defense system is very much in crisis.” She will discuss case loads, lack of pay parity, lack of staffing, and lack of basic infrastructure. https://twitter.com/kansasbarleg/status/1356355427827593219
This has a “ripple effect” throughout the entire Kansas criminal legal system because 85% of adult felony cases require appointed counsel.
The biggest problem is caseload - under 50-year-old standards, our public defenders carry more cases than recommended, which has legal and ethical impacts (and keeps people from becoming PDs or drives them away).
Three trial offices came in under 150 cases, and were only able to do that by not taking cases for a significant chunk of the year. The other offices were above that - I believe Heather said the avg was 205 cases. SG CO averaged 278 cases per attorney.
At a 40-hour work week, that's 10 hours/year for each of those 278 cases. That includes cases of all levels: thefts, robberies, murders, etc.
Imagine getting ten hours of defense work on a murder case. That's malpractice.
Imagine getting ten hours of defense work on a murder case. That's malpractice.
Of course, licensed attorneys under a code of ethics aren't going to spend only 10 hours on a serious case. So that means they are working overtime constantly, which makes it no surprise that BIDS has such a high turnover rate.
A study from Louisiana RE: how much time an attorney needs to spend to provide reasonably effective counsel in a low level case is 22 hours and 200 hours for higher severity level cases/cases with a life sentence at stake.
BIDS does not have a training director/section, which is rare for systems our size.
Rep. Wheeler mentioned that back in 2005, PDs in Garden City were buying their own toilet paper. @heathercessnapd replied that as an appellate attorney, she and others had to buy paper to print briefs on because they were out of money in the paper budget.
Rep. Carmichael said he was charging $80/hour in 1982. He wonders how BIDS gets anyone to work for $80/hour. (Recall what Heather said earlier: the avg. hourly rate that private counsel charges is $225.)
You can read all about this crisis in BIDS' A Report on the Status of Public Defense in Kansas:
http://www.sbids.org/forms/Report%209-30-2020.pdf
http://www.sbids.org/forms/Report%209-30-2020.pdf
Rep. Carmichael: How are you going to be able to handle all of the cases (that Mr. Bennett said is the backlog in SG CO)?
Heather: I don't know.
Heather: I don't know.
Rep. Carmichael asked @heathercessnapd about public defenders being able to become judges, and Heather said if we are going to assume that a prosecutor can put aside their biases, then we should assume that public defenders can do the same. (I think I got that right.)
Rep. Jennings asked if this is a systemic problem (he referred to what PDs and dist. ct. judges are paid), and Heather agreed -- the system's been underfunded for years. (FYI: KS district court judges' salaries rank a dismal 48 out of 50, even when adjusted for cost of living.)
And that ends my report. I have approx. 496 opinions on these things, but the truth speaks for itself. So many thanks to @heathercessnapd for her leadership and and thank you to House Judiciary for hearing from her.
