The Arkansas Public Defender Commission requested an additional 46 attorneys, 10 legal support staff members and about $5.5 million in increased funding to reduce its attorneys' caseloads.
RELATED ARTICLE
http://www.arkansas…">Police ask for fee rise to fund digital tickets
The proposed budget -- $29.7 million total -- was presented Tuesday morning to the Arkansas Legislative Council's Joint Budget Committee, the first step in a long budget process for the 2016 fiscal year that will be completed during the 2015 legislative session. The commission's proposal is about $5.5 million more than the governor's proposed budget, which includes three additional employees instead of 56.
Legislators tabled the commission's request until the end of the council's budget hearings, likely in November.
"The executive recommendation [from Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe] is just too meager and denies people equal protection under the law," said Democratic Rep. John Walker, a Little Rock lawyer. "You're putting more pressure on people to plead guilty, because of having fewer lawyers, or having lawyers who are more strained in terms of the representation burdens that they have. What you're doing is encouraging those [attorneys] not to pay close attention to people charged with a crime."
Walker said an extra $5.5 million probably wouldn't be enough to fix the system, suggesting the commission should have requested a larger amount.
Greg Parrish, the executive director of the Public Defender Commission, said the American Bar Association set a standard that attorneys should handle no more than 200 misdemeanor cases or 150 felony cases per year. A recent study showed that the state's 158 public defenders handled roughly 85,000 cases last year, he said.
Although the workloads vary greatly among the state's 23 public defender offices, the average attorney would handle 537 cases.
The request would place a more-experienced level-three public defender and a level-two public defender in each of the judicial circuits as well as hire five statewide capital-case investigators and five statewide paralegals.
But Walker said it seemed like more help would be necessary to properly represent defendants.
"It is my concern you have not presented an adequate budget to deal with the people you serve," Walker told Parrish. "I don't know how you can provide adequate counsel with those resources."
Parrish said that for his agency to meet the American Bar Association standard, he would need to add 250 positions.
He said according to the Arkansas Crime Information Center statistics, about 100,000 crimes were committed in 1998, and preliminary numbers for 2013 showed roughly 250,000 crimes committed in Arkansas.
"We initially requested 46 attorney positions, and I realized that alone would not bring us up to the standard," he said. "I realize the burden of those positions, but I also realize the statistical data. I will tell you this from a director's standpoint, what really scares me is that there is a wide approach throughout this country for litigation involving public defender systems."
Parrish said there was a case filed by a Georgia public defender in January alleging that she did not have time to go to the jail and did not have adequate time under her caseload to meet with clients or conduct investigations.
He said there is a request to allow the Georgia case to become a class-action lawsuit for anyone represented by the public defender office in that state.
"If you change the location, and names, it could be Arkansas," he said.
Rep. Doug House, R-North Little Rock, also a lawyer, said the legislators who are lawyers know that several judges have made it clear they are unhappy about the public defender situation in Arkansas.
"The three or four or five lawyers I see in the room are all very familiar with the federal courts and state courts firing some warning shots telling us we will not be able to get a conviction in the state's courts unless we have adequate representation of counsel for indigent defendants," he said. "They've been kind of polite about it, but the signals are there."
He asked whether the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts had weighed in on the Public Defender Commission's request. Department of Finance and Administration employees as well as Parrish, said the office had not.
Stephanie Harris, spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts, said her agency does not typically weigh in on other agencies' budget requests.
Rep. Andrea Lea, R-Russellville, said for the past six budget cycles that she has been in the Legislature, the commission has asked for increased staffing and more resources.
"Every single time there is a request for more attorneys ... every single time the [governor] did not approve it, that is pretty correct. The need has always been there, that is my recollection," she said.
Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Beebe, said the governor has an obligation to present a balanced budget every year.
"We have not found anywhere else to take that requested funding from," he said. "If the new governor and the new Legislature can come up with a new stream of revenue for them and a new source of funding, they clearly have the need for it. But we haven't been hearing a lot of ideas. You're always concerned about what all of our agencies face, but again we have to submit a balanced budget."
The funding for the Public Defender Commission comes from two sources -- the central services fund, which pays for most of the constitutional offices and other state functions, and the State Administration of Justice Fund. The second source, which funds the courts and other judicial functions, has been depleted because of increased funding requests from several agencies, added obligations like court interpreters and falling revenue.
Parrish said if another source of funding isn't found, the state could be subject to a lawsuit similar to that in Georgia.
"The allegations [in that lawsuit] are not enough time to meet with clients, not enough time to visit jails or conduct an investigation because you don't have the manpower to do so," he said. "It's called meet and plead. You meet your client, you plead your client."
Parrish said that under his current budget he can't hire more attorneys, adding, "I acknowledge we are overworked, but I have no more positions to fill. This is all I have."
The Legislature gave the commission permission to hire two attorneys and one litigation specialist to prepare for several likely state Supreme Court appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court said it's "cruel and unusual punishment" for states to pass laws mandating life sentences without the possibility of parole for youths who commit murder. Dozens of Arkansas inmates are expected to file appeals under the ruling. Parrish said those trials could start as early as January.
A section on 10/22/2014