Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Report outlines gaps at public defender's office

Clark County Public Defender Marcus Cooper presents the findings of a consultant's report to Clark County commissioners on Tuesday morning. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Heavy workloads, inadequate training and lackluster accountability in the Clark County public defender's office have compromised the legal defense provided to the poor, according to a report released Tuesday.

Attorneys in the office are saddled with workloads double the national standard, and juvenile cases are mounting at such a rate that lawyers devote an average of two hours to each case.

The report from the National Legal Aid & Defender Association states that caseloads "are in serious breach of nationally recognized workload standards."

"The office has been historically understaffed and there is a serious crisis in adult felony and misdemeanor representation," it states. "Juvenile representation is beyond the crisis point and requires immediate attention to avert constitutional challenges of ineffective assistance of counsel."

The nonprofit agency was hired by the county a year ago to analyze the public defender's office. The findings, which were presented Tuesday to the Clark County Commission, are to be used to identify and correct longtime management deficiencies.

The report blasted the management practices of former Public Defender Morgan Harris and the lack of money the county has allocated to the office over the past decade. Harris, who retired from the county in October 2001 after 29 years, wasn't available for comment Tuesday.

The report compliments current Public Defender Marcus Cooper as having the "vision and compassion" to rejuvenate the office, and for recognizing that the "enormity" of the problems must be resolved in a pragmatic way.

Cooper said his office needs to increase its staff of lawyers by about 70 percent to get the number of cases per attorney down to the national standard.

But the report comes at a time when the county's revenues are not meeting expectations, and when all county departments combined are requesting 816 new positions at a cost of $50 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Cooper said failure to address the problems puts his office is at greater risk of being sued on grounds that it didn't provide adequate representation as guaranteed by the Constitution.

Under Harris, the lawyers had too much autonomy and weren't held accountable for how they handled cases, the report states. Defendants probably suffered as a result, it says, and some might have spent more time in jail than necessary.

Training was lacking under Harris, and attorneys complained of being "thrown into" practice without any direction. They had to figure out for themselves how to file motions and appeals and how to conduct themselves at trial, according to the report.

"Training is a critical component to our office," Cooper said. "There is no justification for not providing quality representation."

An attorney shouldn't handle more than 150 cases per year, according to standards established by the American Bar Association and the U.S. Justice Department's National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice.

The county's deputy public defenders each year since 1993 have handled between 13 percent and 65 percent more felonies than the standard allows, and 1993 was the last time the department disposed of as many cases as it was assigned in a year's time, according to the report.

When coupled with the number of misdemeanor cases each year, deputy public defenders are "handling cases at more than double the recommended national caseload," the report states.

The public defender's office had two attorneys assigned to juvenile cases until Cooper assigned a third last year. From 1993 to 2001, the number of new juvenile cases increased more than 379 percent while staffing stayed the same, the report said. At the end of 2001, each juvenile attorney was handling 950 cases per year, which means each case received less than two hours of an attorney's time.

"The attorneys' work in this unit ... is not about representing children, it is about processing cases," the report states.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, chastised the County Commission for not making the public defender's office a higher budget priority and said the review underscores earlier studies citing mismanagement and disregard for clients.

"The office that Marcus Cooper inherited was a mess and continues to be a mess despite the strides that have been made to resolve the problems," Peck said. "That department is severely underfunded and understaffed to the point that the county has substantial legal exposure to the point that they are likely to be sued by clients who allege ineffective assistance of counsel."