Public defenders may turn away new clients

While the Missouri Public Defenders Commission grapples with how to handle increasing caseloads and state funding it considers insufficient, Cape Girar-deau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said he does not agree with a proposed plan to turn away new clients until caseloads decrease.

He called the plan "ridiculous and unprofessional," saying no such problems exist in the Cape Girardeau County Public Defender's Office.

"In Cape Girardeau, the public defender's office is manned by professionals who do their jobs, and it is nowhere near falling apart," Swingle said.

The commission considered the so-called "nuclear option" last week as a way to control the burgeoning caseloads for the state's 350 public defenders who are appointed to represent those who can't afford an attorney.

Commissioners postponed voting on the plan until Friday.

"I think there is an attempt to fix this problem," said Cathy Kelly, a St. Louis deputy director of the Missouri Public Defender System. "My personal hope is it can be fixed short of this."

"That's like a doctor at a hospital quitting treating patients," Swingle countered. "You could always use more money. That's just life in the trenches."

According Kelly, caseloads have increased by 12,000 over the last six years, bringing the number of cases to 88,000 last year. That averages out to about 300 cases for each Missouri public defender.

"Our attorneys are having to triage cases, taking the most serious ones first while a number of others wait," she said. "No matter how good a lawyer you are, you can't handle too many cases."

Adding to the problem is the constant turnover in the public defender offices and relatively low pay, which she said starts at $34,000 and maxes out in the mid-$60,000s.

Kelly referred to a 2005 study by the Spangenberg Group, a nationally renowned research organization, that called the salaries for Missouri public defenders "pathetic" and calculated the cumulative turnover rate for the program to be about 100 percent within the last five years.

Swingle counters: "The question becomes, does the public want to spend more than that for their lawyers?"

He said assistant prosecutors in his office start at $33,000 and can earn $48,000 after four years on the job.

"In the real world you have to go to court and try their cases, and it would be nice to have more money, but it doesn't work that way for public prosecutors and defenders," he said.

Swingle agreed public defenders need more manageable caseloads and suggested the commission hire additional people.

Kelly said the commission approves a budget request every year asking for more money that could be used to increase staff as well as salaries.

Reporter C.M. Schmidlkofer contributed to this report