A rule mandating how much time public defenders spend on cases is expected to go before the Idaho Legislature next year, according to the head of a commission tasked with its creation.
The Idaho Public Defense Commission, a state group bound by law to create rules related to improving the public defense system, does not know what a workload standard will look like yet, but it hopes to have a draft rule this summer.
That’s why it is holding a series of seven town hall-style public information meetings discussing the commission’s plans for the year and seeking input from attorneys in the creation of the rule. The public defense commission had its first meeting in Nampa Thursday, with another planned April 10 in Twin Falls.
“This is just the beginning,” said Kimberly Simmons, the commission’s executive director.
The issue of Idaho’s public defense system has long been in the public eye, particularly this year with an Idaho court approving the ACLU’s class action lawsuit against the state claiming overworked public defenders are not able to provide adequate defense.
All rules have to go before committees in the Idaho Legislature. If approved, the workload standard would be implemented May 1, 2019, along with all other new rules.
The commission hopes to inform its creation, in part, with a study on public defense attorneys' workloads authored by Boise State University’s Idaho Policy Institute. An Associated Press story on a draft of the study consumed headlines in February, but Simmons disagrees with its interpretation.
She argued its reporting on the four hours spent on felony cases, on average, was “misleading” because it was out of context. However, it’s worth noting that value held true in the final study published March 1.
Simmons believes the study found roughly four hours because of the variability of cases as felonies, including crimes like murder and drug manufacturing — with drastically different complexity in litigation.
“The article interpreted the results in that draft report incorrectly — completely misleading,” she said, soon adding that of the four hours number, “we don’t think that’s true.”
The data was extremely limited in its scope, Simmons said, as it only tracked attorneys’ work time on cases during a 12-week period.
“Only some of those cases were opened and closed within that 12-week period,” she said. “So those were the only cases where we knew exactly how much time the attorneys spent.”
For cases that only opened or closed inside that period, she said researchers had to do some “calculations” to determine how much time attorneys spent.
“And so that four hours that was reported was based on those calculations,” Simmons said. “We just don’t have enough Idaho data ... to make an accurate calculation of how much time attorneys are spending on cases.”
The data’s true value, she argues, lies in helping the commission create the standards.
She also mentioned a push toward increased data collection, which could provide a more complete picture of the successes and pitfalls of public defense.
When asked how to accurately interpret the data, Simmons said, “I don’t really think there is a good way to interpret it other than to say, ‘We have data now that will support an Idaho standard.’”
The study noted the average time spent for felony cases was about a quarter of the average recommended time: 3.8 hours spent compared to the 14.77 hours recommended as sufficient time. When all individual tasks in felony cases were broken down and estimated, one recommended sufficient time was 38.52 hours, but Simmons warned not all cases required that amount of work.
This trend held true for cases in every other category. Misdemeanor cases received nearly 40 percent of the recommended sufficient time: 2.2 hours, on average, to the 5.42 hours recommended.
A 2010 report by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association noted in 2007 that there were 12 times as many misdemeanor cases than felony cases in Idaho, totaling 74,210 misdemeanors to 6,135 felonies.
