FRANKLIN COUNTY, Wash. - A proposal by Senator Nikki Torres (R-15th District) that would have required the state to take on more costs of the Office of Public Defense missed a cutoff deadline in the state legislature this year.Â
Previous coverage: State lawmakers asked to approve more funding for Office of Public Defense
It's news that wasn't unexpected, but still poses a problem for the Franklin County budget.
You have a constitutional right to counsel when you are charged with a crime. If you can't afford a lawyer, the government has to step in and assign a public defender.Â
Franklin County Administrator Mike Gonzalez says lawyers have to meet a high standard to even qualify to be public defenders.Â
"They have to have more credentials than even a prosecutor when they defend somebody," Gonzalez explains. "To defend a Class A felony like a murder, you have to have so much courtroom time. So I can't hire a person out of Gonzaga law school and say, OK, go defend this guy or this woman - it just doesn't work that way."
That can be a good thing. If you are charged with a crime you didn't commit, and you cannot afford to defend yourself, you want someone with excellent credentials on your side.
The problem is that public defense is not often seen as a glamorous career choice, and it's not particularly lucrative, especially for an experienced lawyer.Â
Gonzalez says we're facing a shortage of public defenders, which leaves the county in the difficult position of hiring private lawyers for public defense. That can cost more than $25,000 per case when it comes to something like a murder charge.
"It is a constitutional right to be defended, so the thing that we want to do is provide the best defense for every single person who needs our services," Gonzalez says. "Especially in Franklin County - we're a majority-minority county. Up to 80% of the people that we serve on the defense side are Spanish speakers first, so they prefer to speak in Spanish. So that's an extra layer of protection and it's an extra cost that we have to put forward that's an unfunded mandate."
Why not just let people sit in jail and wait for a public defender to become available?
It's unconstitutional. In addition to your right to counsel, you have a right to a "speedy" trial.Â
That means without enough public defenders to go to court, there is a very real possibility that some people charged with crimes could be released from jail - their charges dropped - simply because the county ran out of time.
"You have to go to trial within 60 days," Gonzalez says. "If we don't have lawyers for these people, to defend them, a judge can say, 'OK, you're out on the streets.' And where do they end up? At your front doorstep committing crimes."
"It becomes those nuisance crimes," he adds. "They're breaking into your car, they're stealing your Amazon packages off your porch, they're breaking into your garage, you know? It's those kind of crimes that we wind up seeing when we have to put people back out on the streets. And it just becomes a nuisance; it makes the city unsafe and the county unsafe and we simply don't want that."
With Sen. Torres' bill finished for the year, I asked Gonzalez where the county goes from here. Â
He told me there is a chance that the Washington Supreme Court will step in and order the state to fund public defense, in much the same way that the court ordered the state to fund public education in the McCleary decision more than a decade ago.
While that case is making its way through the courts, state lawmakers are considering a proposal that would allow property taxes to be raised by up to 3% per year when inflation is high, rather than the 1% they're limited to now. That would help county budgets, but might not be enough to fix the funding issues we're facing right now.
Another possible boost could come from SB 5780, also sponsored by Sen. Torres. It would create an internship program to encourage more young lawyers to head to rural areas to get courtroom experience, which would in turn help them reach the standards required of a public defender faster. SB 5780 is currently awaiting a vote on the Senate floor, with the next key deadline coming up February 13th.
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