KOOTENAI COUNTY, Idaho — As a shortage of public defenders continues to strain North Idaho’s legal system, Kootenai County’s top public defender says there’s no end in sight.
Public defense services in Idaho’s 44 counties were recently consolidated into the office of the State Public Defender. Though the new system was created in response to lawsuits over Idaho’s deficiencies in public defense, it has led to an exodus of public defenders from county offices and numerous indigent defendants appearing in court without any specific attorney prepared to represent them.
First District Judge Robert Caldwell called a hearing this week to address the cases of four such defendants.
“I’m almost in my 16th year as a judge,” Caldwell said in court Wednesday. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s really problematic, not so much how the court is being treated but how the people are being treated.”
By the time the hearing began, a specific attorney had been assigned to each case, one as recently as that morning. But the question of how the shortage of public defenders will impact other cases remained.
Caldwell described a defendant who showed up for court but had no attorney to represent him. The man said he’d been unable to reach anyone in the public defender’s office. At the time, Caldwell advised him to keep trying.
“I thought of how unbelievable it was that I would have to tell somebody that they have to chase down their appointed counsel just to get a hold of them,” Caldwell said. “It’s not OK, from my perspective, (for public defenders) to just miss court. I’m not going to let it happen.”
Jay Logsdon, the lead public defender for the First District, said he didn’t disagree with the judge.
“The problem is we don’t have any people to send,” he said.
There is a dearth of public defenders in North Idaho, Logsdon said. In Kootenai County, just 11 public defenders are struggling to manage cases that ought to be distributed among a staff of 26 attorneys. Meanwhile, Shoshone County has no institutional office for public defense; as the First District Public Defender, Logsdon is managing indigent defense for the entire county.
To read the full story, visit our news partner, the Coeur d'Alene Press.
