Lack of Oregon Public Defenders Leaves Hundreds of Defendants on Their Own
Oregon has the equivalent of 600 full-time court-appointed attorneys, who have historically shouldered about 75,000 adult criminal cases a year..
Landwebs
Across Oregon, roughly 1,300 defendants are caught up in a public defender shortage with their cases unable to move forward until they can find representation, reports Zane Sparling for Oregon Live. Oregon has the equivalent of 600 full-time court-appointed attorneys, who have historically shouldered about 75,000 adult criminal cases a year. Complaints of overwork and low pay among public defenders have been allowed to fester for years. State officials have struggled to keep an accurate tally of the swelling numbers of unrepresented cases and The Oregon Judicial Department admits it had no standardized recordkeeping for the issue until Aug. 22.
In Multnomah County, the court system delayed more than 700 unrepresented misdemeanor cases and 800 unrepresented felony cases from February through mid-August. Over the same time, only 13 misdemeanor cases were dismissed because of the lack of an available court-appointed defense lawyer, while 40 such felony cases were dismissed outright and 120 felony cases were eventually dismissed after being delayed.
