Table of Contents Commentary Printed Standards
Standard 13.1 Availability of Publicly Financed Representation in Criminal Cases
Public representation should be made available to eligible defendants (as defined in Standard 13.2) in all criminal cases at their request, or the request of someone acting for them, beginning at the time the individual either is arrested or is requested to participate in an investigation that has focused upon him as a likely suspect. The representation should continue during trial court proceedings and through the exhaustion of all avenues of relief from conviction.
Defendants should be discouraged from conducting their own defense in criminal prosecutions. No defendant should be permitted to defend himself if there is a basis for believing that:
1. The defendant will not be able to deal effectively with the legal or factual issues likely to be raised;
2. The defendant's self‑representation is likely to impede the reasonably expeditious processing of the case; or
3. The defendant's conduct is likely to be disruptive of the trial process.
Standard 13.2 Payment for Public Representation
An individual provided public representation should be required to pay any portion of the cost of the representation that he is able to pay at the time. Such payment should be no more than an amount that can be paid without causing substantial hardship to the individual or his family. Where any payment would cause substantial hardship to the individual or his family, such representation should be provided without cost.
The test for determining ability to pay should be a flexible one that considers such factors as amount of income, bank account, ownership of a home, a car, or other tangible or intangible property, the number of dependents, and the cost of subsistence for the defendant and those to whom he owes a legal duty of support. In applying this test, the following criteria and qualifications should govern:
1. Counsel should not be denied to any person merely because his friends or relatives have resources adequate to retain counsel or because he has posted, or is capable of posting, bond.
2. Whether a private attorney would be interested in representing the defendant in his present economic circumstances should be considered.
3. The fact that an accused on bail has been able to continue employment following his arrest should not be determinative of his ability to employ private counsel.
4. The defendant's own assessment of his financial ability or inability to obtain representation without substantial hardship to himself or his family should be considered.
Standard 13.3 Initial Contact with Client
The first client contact and initial interview by the public defender, his attorney staff, or appointed counsel should be governed by the following:
1. The accused, or a relative, close friend, or other responsible person acting for him, may request representation at any stage of any criminal proceedings. Procedures should exist whereby the accused is informed of this right, and of the method for exercising it. Upon such request, the public defender or appointed counsel should contact the interviewee.
2. If, at the initial appearance, no request for publicly provided defense services has been made, and it appears to the judicial officer that the accused has not made an informed waiver of counsel and is eligible for public representation, an order should be entered by the judicial officer referring the case to the public defender, or to appointed counsel. The public defender or appointed counsel should contact the accused as soon as possible following entry of such an order.
3. Where, pursuant to court order or a request by or on behalf of an accused, a publicly provided attorney interviews an accused and it appears that the accused is financially ineligible for public defender services, the attorney should help the accused obtain competent private counsel in accordance with established bar procedures and should continue to render all necessary public defender services until private counsel assumes responsibility for full representation of the accused.
Standard 13.4 Public Representation of Convicted Offenders
Counsel should be available at the penitentiary to advise any inmate desiring to appeal or collaterally attack his conviction. An attorney also should be provided to represent: an indigent inmate of any detention facility at any proceeding affecting his detention or early release; an indigent parolee at any parole revocation hearing; and an indigent probationer at any proceeding affecting his probationary status.
Standard 13.5 Method of Delivering Defense Services
Services of a full‑time public defender organization, and a coordinated assigned counsel system involving substantial participation of the private bar, should be available in each jurisdiction to supply attorney services to indigents accused of crime. Cases should be divided between the public defender and assigned counsel in a manner that will encourage significant participation by the private bar in the criminal justice system.
Standard 13.6 Financing of Defense Services
Defender services should be organized and administered in a manner consistent with the needs of the local jurisdiction. Financing of defender services should be provided by the State. Administration and organization should be provided locally, regionally, or statewide.
Standard 13.7 Defender to be Full Time and Adequately Compensated
The office of public defender should be a full-time occupation. State or local units of government should create regional public defenders serving more than one local unit of government if this is necessary to create a caseload of sufficient size to justify a full‑time public defender. The public defender should be compensated at a rate not less than that of the presiding judge of the trial court of general jurisdiction.
Standard 13.8 Selection of Public Defenders
The method employed to select public defenders should insure that the public defender is as independent as any private counsel who undertakes the defense of a fee‑paying criminally accused person. The most appropriate selection method is nomination by a selection board and appointment by the Governor. If a jurisdiction has a Judicial Nominating Commission as described in Standard 7.1, that commission also should choose public defenders. If no such commission exists, a similar body should be created for the selection of public defenders.
An updated list of qualified potential nominees should be maintained. The commission should draw names from this list and submit them to the Governor. The commission should select a minimum of three persons to fill a public defender vacancy unless the commission is convinced there are not three qualified nominees. This list should be sent to the Governor within 30 days of a public defender vacancy, and the Governor should select the defender from this list. If the Governor does not appoint a defender within 30 days, the power of appointment should shift to the commission.
A public defender should serve for a term of not less than four years and should be permitted to be reappointed.
A public defender should be subject to disciplinary or removal procedures for permanent physical or mental disability seriously interfering with the performance of his duties, willful misconduct in office, willful and persistent failure to perform public defender duties, habitual intemperance, or conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Power to discipline a public defender should be placed in the judicial conduct commission provided in Standard 7.4.
Standard 13.9 Performance of Public Defender Function
Policy should be established for and supervision maintained over a defender office by the public defender. It should be the responsibility of the public defender to insure that the duties of the office are discharged with diligence and competence.
The public defender should seek to maintain his office and the performance of its function free from political pressures that may interfere with his ability to provide effective defense services. He should assume a role of leadership in the general community, interpreting his function to the public and seeking to hold and maintain their support of and respect for this function.
The relationship between the law enforcement component of the criminal justice system and the public defender should be characterized by professionalism, mutual respect, and integrity. It should not be characterized by demonstrations of negative personal feelings on one hand or excessive familiarity on the other. Specifically, the following guidelines should be followed:
1. The relations between public defender attorneys and prosecution attorneys should be on the same high level of professionalism that is expected between responsible members of the bar in other situations.
2. The public defender must negate the appearance of impropriety by avoiding excessive and unnecessary camaraderie in and around the courthouse and in his relations with law enforcement officials, remaining at all times aware of his image as seen by his client community.
3. The public defender should be prepared to take positive action, when invited to do so, to assist the police and other law enforcement components in understanding and developing their proper roles in the criminal justice system, and to assist them in developing their own professionalism. In the course of this educational process he should assist in resolving possible areas of misunderstanding.
4. He should maintain a close professional relationship with his fellow members of the legal community and organized bar, keeping in mind at all times that this group offers the most potential support for his office in the community and that, in the final analysis, he is one of‑them. Specifically:
a. He must be aware of their potential concern that he will preempt the field of criminal law, accepting as clients all accused persons without regard to their ability or willingness to retain private counsel. He must avoid both the appearance and fact of competing with the private bar.
b. He must, while in no way compromising his representation of his own clients, remain sensitive to the calendaring problems that beset civil cases as a result of criminal case overloads, and cooperate in resolving these.
c. He must maintain the bar's faith in the defender system by affording vigorous and effective representation to his own clients.
d. He must maintain dialogue between his office and the private bar, never forgetting that the bar more than any other group has the potential to assist in keeping his office free from the effects of political pressures and influences.
Standard 13.10 Selection and Retention of Attorney Staff Members
Hiring, retention, and promotion policies regarding public defender staff attorneys should be based upon merit. Staff attorneys, however, should not have civil service status.
Standard 13.11 Salaries for Defender Attorneys
Salaries through the first 5 years of service for public defender staff attorneys should be comparable to those of attorney associates in local private law firms.
Standard 13.12 Workload of Public Defenders
The caseload of a public defender office should not exceed the following: felonies per attorney per year: not more than 150; misdemeanors (excluding traffic) per attorney per year: not more than 400; juvenile court cases per attorney per year: not more than 200; Mental Health Act cases per attorney per year: not more than 200; and appeals per attorney per year: not more than 25.
For purposes of this standard, the term case means a single charge or set of charges concerning a defendant (or other client) in one court in one proceeding. An appeal or other action for postjudgment review is a separate case. If the public defender determines that because of excessive workload the assumption of additional cases or continued representation in previously accepted cases by his office might reasonably be expected to lead to inadequate representation in cases handled by him, he should bring this to the attention of the court. If the court accepts such assertions, the court should direct the public defender to refuse to accept or retain additional cases for representation by his office.
Standard 13.13 Community Relations
The public defender should be sensitive to all of the problems of his client community. He should be particularly sensitive to the difficulty often experienced by the members of that community in understanding his role. In response:
1. He should seek, by all possible and ethical means, to interpret the process of plea negotiation and the public defender's role in it to the client community.
2. He should, where possible, seek office locations that will not cause the public defender's office to be excessively identified with the judicial and law enforcement components of the criminal justice system, and should make every effort to have an office or offices within the neighborhoods from which clients predominantly come.
3. He should be available to schools and organizations to educate members of the community as to their rights and duties related to criminal justice.
Standard 13.14 Supporting Personnel and Facilities
Public defender offices should have adequate supportive services, including secretarial, investigation, and social work assistance.
In rural areas (and other areas where necessary), units of local government should combine to establish regional defenders' offices that will serve a sufficient population and caseload to justify a supporting organization that meets the requirements of this standard.
The budget of a public defender for operational expenses other than the costs of personnel should be substantially equivalent to, and certainly not less than, that provided for other components of the justice system with whom the public defender must interact, such as the courts, prosecution, the private bar, and the police. The budget should include:
1. Sufficient funds to provide quarters, facilities, copying equipment, and communications comparable to those available to private counsel handling a comparable law practice.
2. Funds to provide tape recording, photographic and other investigative equipment of a sufficient quantity, quality, and versatility to permit preservation of evidence under all circumstances.
3. Funds for the employment of experts and specialists, such as psychiatrists, forensic pathologists, and other scientific experts in all cases in which they may be of assistance to the defense.
4. Sufficient funds or means of transportation to permit the office personnel to fulfill their travel needs in preparing cases for trial and in attending court or professional meetings.
Each defender lawyer should have his own office that will assure absolute privacy for consultation with clients.
The defender office should have immediate access to a library containing the following basic materials: the annotated laws of the State, the State code of criminal procedure, the municipal code, the United States Code Annotated, the State appellate reports, the U.S. Supreme Court reports, Federal courts of appeal and district court reports, citators governing all reports and statutes in the library, digests for State and Federal cases, a legal reference work digesting State law, a form book of approved jury charges, legal treatises on evidence and criminal law, criminal law and U.S. Supreme Court case reporters published weekly, loose leaf services related to criminal law, and, if available, an index to the State appellate brief bank. In smaller offices, a secretary who has substantial experience with legal work should be assigned as librarian, under the direction of one of the senior lawyers. In large offices, a staff attorney should be responsible for the library.
Standard 13.15 Providing Assigned Counsel
The public defender office should have responsibility for compiling and maintaining a panel of attorneys from which a trial judge may select an attorney to appoint to a particular defendant The trial court should have the right to add to the panel attorneys not placed on it by the public defender. The public defender's office also should provide initial and inservice training to lawyers on the panel and support services for appointed lawyers, and it should monitor the performance of appointed attorneys.
Standard 13.16 Training and Education of Defenders
The training of public defenders and assigned counsel panel members should be systematic and comprehensive. Defenders should receive training at least equal to that received by the prosecutor and the judge. An intensive entry‑level training program should be established at State and national levels to assure that all attorneys, prior to representing the indigent accused, have the basic defense skills necessary to provide effective representation.
A defender training program should be established at the national level to conduct intensive training programs aimed at imparting basic defense skills to new defenders and other lawyers engaged in criminal defense work.
Each State should establish its own defender training program to instruct new defenders and assigned panel members in substantive law procedure and practice.
Every defender office should establish its own orientation program for new staff attorneys and for new panel members participating in provision of defense services by assigned counsel.
Inservice training and continuing legal education programs should be established on a systematic basis at the State and local level for public defenders, their staff attorneys, and lawyers on assigned counsel panels as well as for other interested lawyers.
NLADA Mutual Insurance Co., RRG
