Proposed budget provides no relief from swollen caseloads for DA, Public Defender

Sam Skolnik

Monday, May 21, 2007 | 7:55 a.m.

Local prosecutors and public defenders have gotten short shrift from county budgeters this year, officials say, placing more stress on two overworked offices.

The county's proposed budget would fund just one new attorney for the Public Defender - out of the 24 attorneys and 22 support staffers requested. And the District Attorney's Office is in line for only one new attorney and four support staff, out of the 57 attorneys and 49 support staffers they asked for.

The lack of funding for the Public Defender may prompt the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada to file a federal suit on the agency's behalf.

Public Defender Phil Kohn says his agency needs the new personnel to be able to cope with rapidly rising criminal caseloads. In large part, he said that has stemmed from the increased number of Metro Police on the streets - as many as 300 new officers since last year.

"That's what we think we need to fix the office and make it viable," Kohn said.

According to Kohn and Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, the Public Defender is becoming increasingly overloaded, making it difficult to perform its core mission: to provide adequate, constitutionally acceptable legal assistance to indigent criminal defendants and others who can't afford to hire their own attorney.

"The caseloads are completely out of control," Peck said. "People's rights are being systematically violated, and the county is showing a complete lack of understanding as to how deep the crisis is."

Kohn said the deputies in his office who handle nonspecialized caseloads currently have an average of 364 felony cases and another 145 misdemeanors on their plates, for a total of 509 cases.

The American Bar Association recommends that deputy public defenders handle no more than 150 felony cases at any given time, or 400 misdemeanors, total.

Kohn said his deputies who handle only murders, including death penalty cases, right now are juggling anywhere from 10 to 16 cases, including three or four death penalty cases. That's twice the suggested number.

Another statistic is even more alarming, Kohn said. From Jan. 1 through April 1 of this year, there were 600 more felony cases that landed in his office than during that same three months in 2006. The felony caseload increased 400 each of the two years.

Kohn said that since the infusion of new police officers, other agencies have gotten some relief from the county for additional staff. There are dozens of new jailers, for example, and scores of new civilian Metro employees. But virtually nothing for the defender's office, despite lobbying Assistant Clark County Manager Elizabeth Quillin.

In addition to new attorneys, Kohn said, his office is in dire need of additional social workers, investigators and other support staff.

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Lalli said his office, with more than 25,000 active felony and gross misdemeanor cases on any given day, also has had a hard time meeting ABA standards. "Defendants need representation, but don't victims also?" Lalli said. "Their numbers are bad. Our numbers are out of control, twice as bad."

Quillin said she sympathized with the plights of the public defenders and prosecutors, but she noted that virtually every criminal justice agency in the county was in the same situation: overworked, understaffed and dealing with unprecedented regional population growth.

Quillin noted that before county officials could even consider funding requests from agencies like the Public Defender and District Attorney's offices, they had to deal with the funding for three "crisis situations": the bailout of the University Medical Center; new guards for a low-level offender facility; easing the overcrowding at the Clark County Detention Center; and 119 new staffers for the Department of Family Services to handle child welfare cases.

The county will be holding a public hearing on the matter Monday.

Peck said that a lawsuit is always an option of last resort, but that the numbers, and the county's response to them, were so inadequate that he has already started consulting with colleagues in the national ACLU headquarters about the possibility of a lawsuit.