7 public defenders in St. Joe cleared 1,768 cases last year. They’re asking for help
Public defenders in St. Joseph, who each take on more than 200 cases a year, have gone to the presiding judge to ask for help.
District defender Shayla Marshall’s office has seven attorneys. In 2019, they closed more than 1,700 cases, according to the Missouri State Public Defender’s annual report.
“With that many clients, it’s really difficult to do a thorough job for every single client,” she said.
Judge Daniel Kellogg took the case under advisement last week, Marshall said.
The St. Joseph office is one of several of the state’s 33 trial offices that have requested judges grant them caseload relief. Plagued by a caseload crisis for years, Missouri’s public defender system is one of the worst in the nation.
An investigation by The Star last year found defendants have been in jail for years waiting to go to trial. Judges have ordered public defenders to violate their ethics to keep taking cases. Innocent people have been convicted and spent decades in prison.
The system’s “excessive caseload calls into serious doubt whether clients receive constitutionally required and effective representation,” an ongoing lawsuit alleges.
Judges have had varying responses. In Boone County, a judge implemented a waitlist for new clients who weren’t in jail to be enacted when attorneys were at capacity. For a time, the judge also appointed private attorneys to public defender cases. In other places, like Jackson and Phelps counties, relief has been denied multiple times.
The St. Joseph office is violating or at risk of violating ethical rules set by the Missouri Supreme Court, Marshall said in a motion filed in November.
“We need relief in some kind of way to meet our duty to our clients,” she told The Star.
Buchanan County Prosecutor Ronald Holliday said his office has eight attorneys and handles cases involving the public defender’s office and private defense attorneys.
“I do not believe they are overloaded, but that’s up for a judge to determine,” he said.
Marshall’s motion proposed putting defendants facing criminal charges for not paying child support on a waitlist.
“The ultimate solution would be more funding for the Missouri State Public Defender system so I can hire more attorneys,” she said. “The quick fix, the Band-Aid fix that we’re asking for in our area, is to waitlist nonsupport defendants because we can use that time to spend on our incarcerated clients.”
Mary Fox, the district defender in St. Louis City, was named director of the Missouri State Public Defender office Thursday.
“It’s an overloaded system, it’s an overworked system, but it’s full of competent attorneys and staff who do amazing work,” said Fox, who has been a public defender for more than 18 years.
She said she hopes the legislature considers additional funding for contract attorneys to take waitlisted cases and a new appellate office in southwest Missouri.
State lawmakers have recognized that the public defender system is broken, but said securing additional funding could be a budgetary and political challenge.
