Themis

Unacceptable. That’s how Gov. Tina Kotek has described Oregon’s public defender crisis.

It’s also how co-chair of the Legislature’s Way and Means Committee Sen. Kate Lieber, D-Portland, described it. It’s how state Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend, has described it.

And yet it goes on.

There’s a federal requirement to provide an attorney for all criminal defendants that can’t afford one and Oregon has not been able to do it.

As of Aug. 8 there were 3,311 unrepresented individuals in Oregon and 1,500 individuals who were previously unrepresented, did not appear in court and are now in warrant status. It’s bad for the defendants. It’s bad for their alleged victims who must wait for justice. And its bad for communities who must face people being released from jail — no matter what the charge — only because the state is not able to find them a public defender.

Deschutes County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Wells Ashby recently pointed out two additional aspects of the problems.

“Our Spanish-speaking unrepresented folks, because it takes longer to handle those cases, the attorneys have been more reluctant to pick those cases up,” he said. “The D.A. and the court, we noticed that maybe a week or two ago.”

That’s another thing that is unacceptable.

And then there is the swiftness, or rather the lack of swiftness, that the Oregon Public Defense Commission — which is responsible for public defenders in the state — moves to authorize the hiring of new public defenders.

Ashby said providers have had local attorneys ready for hire and OPDC could not move quickly enough to get them hired. So they moved on.

OPDC characterized a recent incident slightly differently. It said a local attorney group requested additional “maximum attorney caseload” (MAC) on July 22. OPDC said it has to consider needs across the state and ….It “wasn’t initially clear if more MAC in Deschutes would be needed since so many attorneys recently started or were about to start, and we needed to evaluate the situation. OPDC did end up approving that MAC on 8/6, but the candidate has backed out,” said Lisa Taylor, the government relations manager for OPDC, in an email. She said she understood the opening was offered to another candidate.

We shared OPDC’s response with Ashby. He told us in an email the fact remains that OPDC has been “slow and ineffective” in meeting its “core function.” Local court staff has been able to find attorneys for indigent defenders that OPDC cannot.

In a word, as so many have said before: Unacceptable.