THE DEFENSE
NEVER RESTS
to death penalty cases. The pay is
low, the hours long and the turnover high. Complaints that they
suffer from crushing caseloads
and inadequate support staff can
probably be heard in any courthouse in the country.
But the situation finally reached
a tipping point in Luzerne last December, when chief public defender Al Flora Jr. mutinied against
the county government — his
office’s sole funding source — and
began turning down hundreds of
cases assigned to his attorneys by
the court. Three months later,
he filed a class-action suit seeking
an injunction, forcing the county
to provide additional resources
to his office.
The move quickly drew the
attention of the state’s legal establishment. “The problems in
Luzerne County are very well
known. At some point somebody had to say enough,” says
Ronald Greenblatt, chairman
of the Philadelphia chapter of
the Pennsylvania Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers. “I’m
hoping that other public defenders will take the courageous
stand that Mr. Flora did.”
The situation in Luzerne is not
an isolated one. As funding falls
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
“IT BECOMES
ASSEMBLY-LINE
JUSTICE. IT’S LIKE
A McD ONALD’S
DRIVE-THROUGH —
JUST MOVING THE
BODIES ALONG.”
and cases continue to flood the
system, many already-stressed
defender programs across the
country are being pushed to the
very brink of collapse. And with
little hope of state or federal action to remedy the problem, a
small but growing number of defender offices are rebelling, suing
states and counties over excessive
caseloads that their attorneys
cannot handle without violating
their clients’ constitutional right
to effective representation.
For attorneys like Olexa, the
heavy caseloads follow them
home. Case files are everywhere
in his small home in Trucksville, a
small town just outside of WilkesBarre, the county seat — piled on
the living room floor, the coffee
table, the dining table, the dining