Indigent Defense / Public Defender Systems

ABA Eight Guidelines of Public Defense Related to Excessive Workloads

On August 3, 2009, the ABA House of Delegates approved as official policy of the Association, the Eight Guidelines and their commentary.

Throughout the United States, there has been a chronic lack of adequate funding to provide legal representation for persons in criminal and juvenile delinquency cases who have a Constitutional right to counsel but are unable to afford a lawyer. As a result, public defender agencies and their attorneys are routinely faced with enormous caseloads. Now, especially in light of the current economic downturn, there is a genuine crisis facing state and local jurisdictions. Defenders, therefore, are unable to represent their indigent clients effectively as required by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and from providing competent and diligent representation as required by rules of professional conduct.

The Eight Guidelines of Public Defense Related to Excessive Workloads contain a well thought out course of action not only for public defender agencies forced to deal with too many cases, but also for other providers of indigent defense services with excessive workloads.

Watch the House of Delegates floor discussion regarding the Eight Guidelines (Resolution 119).

On August 3, 2009, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, spoke to the ABA House of Delegates, where he voiced the Department’s commitment to helping improve the indigent defense system and specifically focused on the workload crisis.

“Putting politics aside, we must address the fact that there is a crisis within our nation’s system of indigent defense. Resources for public defender programs lag far behind other justice system programs, constituting only about 3% of all criminal justice expenditures in our nation’s largest counties. In many cases, contract attorneys and assigned lawyers receive compensation that does not even cover their overhead. Defenders in many jurisdictions carry huge caseloads that make it difficult for them to fulfill their legal and ethical responsibilities to their clients. And we often hear of lawyers who cannot interview their clients properly, file appropriate motions, conduct fact investigations, or do many of the other things an attorney should be able to do as a matter of course.

This growing crisis is troubling not just because of the government’s constitutional duty to ensure the right to counsel. When defendants fail to receive competent legal representation, their cases are vulnerable to costly, and time-consuming, mistakes. Lawyers on both sides can spend years dealing with appeals arising from technical infractions and procedural errors. When that happens, no one wins."

See the video (August 3, 2009 - Afternoon Session)

Read the transcript

Restraining Excessive Defender Caseloads: The ABA Ethics Committee Requires Action
The Champion Magazine
By: Professor Norman Lefstein and Georgia Vagenas
"The ABA ethics opinion should be understood as a call to action by both individual defenders burdened with excessive caseloads, as well as by supervisors and heads of defender programs."

The State of Criminal Justice 2009

Authors from across the criminal justice field provide essays on topics ranging from white collar crime to international law to indigent defense. This annual publication examines and reports on the major issues, trends and significant changes in the criminal justice system. The publication serves as an invaluable resource for policy-makers, academics, and students of the criminal justice system alike. The 2009 volume contains 21 chapters focusing on specific aspects of the criminal justice field, with new addition of full text and reports of all of the adopted official ABA policies passed in 2008-2009 that address criminal justice issues.

Mediation in Criminal Matters Project and Mini-Grants