SHUTTERSTOCK
PUBLIC
DEFENDERS
REBEL
AGAINST
CRUSHING
CASELOADS
BY
JOHN
RUDOLF
T HALF PAST 5 on a cold, cloudy April morning, Ed Olexa
kneels by his front door, sorting through stacks of case
files for the coming day’s hearings. Olexa works as a public defender in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, and he’s quadruple-booked this morning, with
four clients scheduled to appear at the same time before different judges.
“My choice last night was to watch ‘American Idol’
or get my files in order,” he says.
Olexa represents nearly 120 clients at a time for
the Luzerne County defender’s office, the majority of them
charged with felonies. It’s a typical caseload for the office,
which is one of the most troubled in the state, according to
a 2011 report commissioned by the Pennsylvania legislature.
The report excoriated the state system as a whole, calling it
obsolete and ineffective, but singled out Luzerne as a place
where inadequate training, funding and supervision of defenders contributed to a “shocking deterioration” in the
quality of representation given to some poor people.
Public defenders are infamous as the workhorses of the
legal system, charged by the courts with representing poor
defendants in criminal matters ranging from misdemeanors
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN RUDOLF