Public defenders in Central Arkansas won't begin refusing new cases today, averting for now a crisis in local courts.
Court-appointed attorneys in Pulaski County reversed course, satisfied with state officials' progress toward a solution to the unprecedented backlog of cases across the state.
In an email late last week, top public defenders in Pulaski and Perry counties informed their deputies that the office would continue taking cases today, despite plans to begin rejecting new clients and offload about 3,000 cases if workloads didn't return to ethical standards.
Since courts put trials on hold during the pandemic, court-appointed attorneys in the district -- and across the state -- saw up to four-fold increases in caseloads, raising concerns about their abilities to meet clients' constitutional rights to adequate counsel.
Even before the coronavirus clogged court dockets, public defenders were managing roughly twice the number of cases recommended by national guidelines, according to Kent Krause, chief deputy public defender for Pulaski and Perry counties.
The caseload problem came to a head in January after an opinion from the Arkansas Supreme Court's Office of Ethics Counsel. The opinion prompted Krause and Bill Simpson, chief public defender, to instruct their deputies to object to new appointments, beginning today.
On Friday, Krause and Simpson told their attorneys that talks over funding additional attorney positions "are not final but are very promising."
"We understand that this will require you to maintain unethically high caseloads, and we don't make this decision lightly," they wrote in the Friday email.
Krause and Simpson pointed to a Feb. 18 statement from Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said state officials were aiming to use funds from the federal America Rescue Plan Act to hire more public defenders and prosecutors.
"These positions will not be permanent but should greatly reduce the backlog and return court operations to normal levels," the statement read. "This backlog is not fair to the victims, defendants or citizens of Arkansas, and I support the plans that are being pursued."
Along with the governor's office, the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator, the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, the Department of Finance and Administration and state legislators are mulling solutions.
On Monday morning, Gregg Parrish, executive director of the Public Defender Commission, said officials planned to meet that afternoon to confirm whether federal coronavirus relief funds could be used for more attorney positions.
Parrish said he and Bob McMahan, state prosecutor coordinator, hope to use the monies to hire attorneys on up to one-year contracts. Both the Public Defender Commission and the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator would receive an equal number of hires under current plans.
He expected the funds would put a dent in the backlog of cases, but was unsure whether the additional short-term positions would allow courts to reduce dockets to pre-pandemic levels.
"I can't see statewide, this many cases handled in a year," he said.
To secure long-term funding for public defenders and parity of pay between court-appointed attorneys and prosecutors, Parrish said he hoped to make more budget requests during the state Legislature's next biennial session, in 2023. But even if he succeeded in securing these positions, Parrish said he would have to wait until at least July 1, 2023, before making new hires.
After the Monday afternoon meeting, McMahan said it appeared funding for the solution might not be available through the American Rescue Plan.
"I'm not sure we meet the criteria that is very limited," he said in an interview.
As a potential solution, McMahan pointed to four bills introduced Monday by state Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock. If passed, the state Public Defender Commission and the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator would each receive $1 million in spending authority during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and $3.25 million in fiscal 2023, which begins July 1. These appropriations would allow each office to hire up to 45 more attorneys on full-time or part-time bases.
On Monday afternoon, Tucker said state officials were still hopeful that coronavirus aid might fund more attorney positions. But if federal aid was not available, he said backing from the Legislature might be the state's only option for addressing the backlog.
He hoped the bills would garner enough support to pass given the immediacy of the crisis. A large bipartisan group of legislators had already rallied around the issue, he said.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding federal coronavirus relief funds, Hutchinson noted in a Monday afternoon statement that the current backlog of cases is primarily the result of court delays caused by the pandemic.
"For that reason, I intend to have further discussions with the [U.S.] Department of Treasury on that point," the Republican governor said. "If that plan is not workable then we will likely need additional funding. There are appropriation bills pending in the General Assembly for this purpose and while there is not funding attached to the appropriation bills, the legislation is important to give us options to address this challenge."
Along with aiding public defenders, more attorney positions could help ease demands on Pulaski County prosecutors. Since September 2020, the office has seen an attrition rate of more than 50% as attorneys struggled to handle mounting caseloads, according to John Johnson, chief deputy prosecutor.
"I hope we can get the help we're asking for," he said Monday.
As courts resume in-person proceedings, Johnson said he expected the backlogs to improve. With defendants again facing the prospect of jury trials, he suspected that more might be willing to take plea agreements.
Dockets at the Pulaski County Courthouse remained high this week with public defenders managing 574 felony cases on Monday. Krause said this workload left his attorneys with three minutes and 20 seconds per case if each division worked all day without breaks.
"It's still a big ask," he said Friday of the decision to keep accepting cases. "We're asking our attorneys to keep their heads in the noose."
If public defenders stopped accepting cases, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Cathi Compton said last month that local courts could enter "a kind of trouble that I don't know how we're going to get out of, and I don't know how long it'll take to get out of."
While Krause said his office would hold off on plans to stop accepting cases, he said public defenders had not set a new deadline for when they expected workloads to return to ethical levels. Rather Krause said his office would continue following talks to ensure state officials were progressing toward a solution for both public defenders and prosecutors.