Court stalls over caseloads

The Nevada Supreme Court came prepared Tuesday to consider setting limits on the number of cases assigned to overburdened public defenders.

Instead, the high court got caught up in the limitations of a report that has created more confusion than clarity.

"Here we are today with this report that offers the court no guidance whatsoever on the issue of caseload standards," Chief Justice James Hardesty said at Tuesday's Supreme Court hearing on indigent defense. "It's extremely disappointing to be in this situation and not have guidance."

The July report by the Spangenberg Group, a Massachusetts-based legal research organization, concluded that public defender offices in Clark and Washoe counties each need dozens more lawyers to give "competent and diligent" counsel to indigent defendants. But the study, which was commissioned last year by Clark and Washoe counties, avoided the question of whether caseload caps are necessary to bring relief to the lawyers.

A sense of frustration was palpable at Tuesday's hearing, which was scheduled for an hour but ran three times as long.

As the seven justices heard arguments Tuesday for and against caseload limits, they struggled to get firm answers on how many cases public defenders have, and the jurists heard disagreement on the definition of a single case.

"We've probably spent an hour today talking about what a case is," said North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Stephen Dahl, a member of an indigent-defense commission formed by the Supreme Court in 2007. "We're getting all bogged down with yearly caseloads and forgetting what happens on a given day to a given (defendant) in a given circumstance."

Dahl was referring to testimony at the hearing that some Clark County public defenders have 18 or more preliminary hearings set for a single day.

Bob Spangenberg, president of the Spangenberg Group, echoed the findings of his report when he told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that public defenders in Reno and Las Vegas are experiencing "case overload."

"They cannot meet their ethical and constitutional requirements with the caseloads they have," he said.

But when pressed on what, if any, caseload limits he would recommend, Spangenberg didn't have an answer except to say he thinks public defenders in Reno and Las Vegas: "are way over" any number he would propose.

The Spangenberg report said that Clark County public defenders each close out about 215 felony cases a year. But they have still other cases that remain open at the end of a year.

The Nevada Association of Counties and two groups representing district attorneys in Nevada are among those that oppose caseload limits. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and other equal-justice activists have endorsed binding caseload caps on capital murder and some sexual assault cases and temporary caps on all other cases.

The standard recommended by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association is 150 cases a year.

The hearing's final speaker was former Supreme Court Justice William Maupin, who as chief justice impaneled the court's indigent-defense commission. Maupin spoke in favor of caseload limits.

"It's time to move toward the end result of this, to define some kind of caseload standard," Maupin said. "This is not about the court's legacy. ... It is first, last and always about the legacy of the criminal justice system in this state."

If the Supreme Court does not order temporary caseload limits, it could provide guidance on whether public defenders are free to refuse accepting cases if they feel they are handling too many already.

Several people who testified at Tuesday's hearing spoke about the difficulty of dealing with indigent-defense issues in times of economic gloom.

David Carroll, research director for the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, said such talk is empty: "The Constitution doesn't allow for defendants' rights to be infringed upon in bad economic times."