Public defenders

St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press

The plight of the Missouri Public Defender System is easy to define. Too many cases piled on attorneys who earn too little.

The numbers are just as easy to quantify. Missouri ranks 47th when it comes to per capita spending on a state public defender system. The present system washes through a 100 percent turnover of employees in just five years thanks to a starting pay of $32,000 in a profession that routinely earns $50,000 to start.

More than 80 percent of all criminal cases filed each year are assigned to public defenders.

The Missouri Bar considers the system in crisis. And Bar president Douglas Copeland brought the Bar's prescription for fixing the problem during a visit to St. Joseph. The cure begins with a $2 million payroll increase to lift the starting pay about $8,000. The Bar also recommends hiring more public defenders when the state's economy improves.

To the Bar's credit, some 300 private attorneys already are voluntarily handling routine traffic cases to lighten the system's caseload.

There is one more key component to proposed therapy tucked away in an independent study of the problem by the Spangenberg Group. Public defenders are mandated to represent every qualified client who faces a charge that includes any jail time.

The special report for the Bar argues that "Missouri has too many minor misdemeanor offenses, particularly traffic offenses, that carry the potential of jail time." Taking away the threat of jail time from the offense of driving while suspended could eliminate as many as 6,000 cases from the system's load.

The demands for better pay will remain strong from the Bar. Lawmakers also will need to address the reclassification of misdemeanor offenses to treat the system's headache completely.