BY PEPPER FISHER
Olympia – The state Supreme Court finally announced a decision in June on the issue of lowering the caseloads for public defenders. That’s after the State Bar Association complained of massive loss of public defenders in our state due to burnout from excessive caseloads.
The court on June 9 ruled on a new substantial reduction in caseload limits for public defenders that can be phased in over 10 years, to take effect on January 1, 2026.
They will eventually reduce public defender caseloads to 47 felony cases or case credits and 120 misdemeanor case credits by 2036. Case credits, as opposed to just plain cases, are intended to account for serious or complex charges that require more investigation and resources. It’s called case weighting. The more difficult the case, the more caseload credits are applied to it. But is it a science, guesswork, or something in-between?
Few people in our community have a higher stake in this issue than Harry Gasnick, the Director of the Clallam County Public Defenders Office. He wants to see more data collected on the accuracy of case weighting as the program moves ahead.
“You really can’t tell how much time an attorney has to spend on a particular case until the data that’s the basis for that, involves attorneys who have adequate support staff, in terms of investigation and social workers. If an attorney is spending their time doing the investigation of a case instead of having an investigator do that, well, you’re using a lot more attorney time on a particular case than would be the circumstance if these other support staff, who are usually compensated at rates less than attorneys, were utilized. And not only are they compensated at hourly rates that are less than attorneys, they’re probably better at those specific specializations so they’re more efficient. It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.”
The State Bar Association has put forward a standardized formula for case weighting, but Gasnick isn’t sold on its veracity. That said, there appears to be an end-around he can use. One that could wind up being a kind of test case to the whole program.
“But the utilization of that formula is not required. Clallam County has a case weighting formula that works on a different system. I believe that we will be permitted to use that going forward, at least under the Supreme Court’s standards, and we’ll see how that plays out.”
One of the mandates of the Supreme Court decision says that the program must be reviewed every 3 years to see how it’s working. We asked Gasnick if he was confident that his office could maintain the same level of service in the first 3 years set to begin on January 1.
“With my anticipated staffing, the answer is yes. At least for the next year or so.”
We’ll follow up in a year or so.