OPINION: Public Defender's Office Understaffed

BY JERAMY GORDON
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER
There is no question our Public Defender’s office is understaffed.
A finite number of attorneys argue thousands of cases a year.
In the U.S., if you are accused of a crime, you have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, the court will appoint one to you, free of charge. That’s where the Public Defender comes in.
In a typical year, attorneys in the Santa Barbara County Public Defender’s office will see 23,000 cases come across their desks.
These matters are assigned to a staff of 39 attorneys. That’s approximately 590 cases per attorney, per year, or more than 1 and a half cases a day. Now, not all cases go to court, but many do.


In a lawsuit filed in Santa Barbara Superior Court on May 18, former Santa Barbara County Public Defender James Egar said he made repeated attempts to communicate what he called an “unmanageable workload in the Public Defender’s Office, thereby impairing the Public Defender’s ability to protect its clients’ constitutional rights and meet its statutory obligations, and resulting in unsafe and unhealthy working conditions for the office’s attorneys and other staff.”
The lawsuit says Egar attempted to communicate staff deficiencies in the Public Defender’s Office to County Chief Executive Officer Michael Brown and the board of supervisors, but was thwarted by Brown.
The suit claims when Egar sat down with Brown to talk about his office’s lack of manpower, Brown became enraged and verbally abusive.
Both Brown and the county Board of Supervisors deny the allegations that Brown’s behavior was anything but professional, but one thing they can’t deny is the fact that the Public Defender’s office is understaffed.
In 1963 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution to provide lawyers in criminal cases for defendants unable to afford their own attorneys.
In the landmark decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, the court held that the right to the assistance of counsel was a fundamental right, essential for a fair trial.
The decision in Gideon created and expanded public defenders.
As a result of the ruling, Santa Barbara County created its public defenders office in1969.
Public defenders are often a rarely-appreciated group of individuals, working in the background to insure your rights are preserved.
When was the last time you thought to yourself: Gee, I bet my local public defender is overworked, I should do something about it?
Probably never.
Unless you’re in a position, or have been in one in the past, to require such help, the thought has never crossed your mind.
If no one is out there lobbying for these folks, will anything ever change? Now’s the time to write to your local county supervisor and demand they take action.
Egar’s lawsuit should have been a wake-up call to the county. Instead of focusing on the allegations of Brown’s alleged behavior, our supervisors should have been reading between the lines.
How can a defendant be given fair representation, when their counsel has nearly 600 other pending cases?
Questions? Comment? E-mail jgordon@santabarbarafree.com