Washington's Yakima County represents breaking point in state's public defender crisis

Yahoo

14-04-2025

A defendant with no available public defender to represent them waits for their court hearing to begin at the Yakima County Jail on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Yakima, Wash. (Photo by Jake Parrish/InvestigateWest)
Last summer, Robert Dale Root was charged with violating a no-contact order to stay away from his partner.
Unable to afford an attorney and facing a dwindling roster of Yakima County public defenders, Root waited three months for a public defender to represent him for the felony charge. His partner repeatedly asked to lift the order, to no avail, as Root posted bail twice — before landing back in jail for violating the order each time.
He took off work for three arraignment hearings, but he showed up to the hearings without legal representation, only for his arraignment to be rescheduled for a later date. The attorney he was finally assigned met with him just once, complained of being flooded with other cases and left the office before Root's case was resolved, about seven months after his initial arrest.
He's since been assigned another attorney and sits in the county jail awaiting a trial date set for April 21.
Root's wait in the bottlenecked queue for counsel in Yakima isn't unusual. In fact, it was common last summer, according to court records reviewed by InvestigateWest. One woman arrested the same month as Root and facing a litany of charges related to theft and drug possession was arraigned eight times and waited five months for a public defender. Another defendant, charged with assault, waited five months. Another appeared at four arraignments without a public defender until his case was eventually dismissed. The list goes on.
'It's not our fault they don't have enough attorneys,' said Root, a 23-year-old descendant of the Yakama Nation. 'We have to sit here and try to await trial because we're innocent until proven guilty. … It's just wrong.'
Lags in Yakima County's court system reflect a breaking point in the state's public defense system. A shortage of public defenders leaves indigent defendants waiting weeks, sometimes months for an attorney. These defendants often are left in the dark, oblivious to when or from whom they will have legal representation. In Washington, the issue varies by county — namely due to the state's lack of financial support and the counties' differing models of service.
'The Legislature has slowly choked the life out of local budgets,' said Derek Young, interim director of the Washington State Association of Counties. 'We can't afford proper staffing levels.'
In what some would call a worst-case scenario, Benton County released five criminal defendants, with charges including rape and other violent crimes, from jail last year because it lacked defense attorneys to represent them.
'That's where their constitutional right becomes now a public safety problem,' Young said. 'The date we've been warning (the state) about for a long time has arrived. It'll start in those places that have the hardest time recruiting attorneys.'
The problem is particularly acute in Yakima County. The county is both being sued by defendants and is suing the state, along with several other counties and the Washington State Association of Counties, for failing to provide adequate funding for public defense services. Young said the decision is in appeal, and he expects another hearing in early May. The director of the Yakima County Department of Assigned Counsel, Paul Kelley, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
On Sept. 30, five plaintiffs who languished in Yakima County's jail without an attorney, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that Yakima County failed to appoint counsel and unlawfully restrained those without legal representation. The plaintiffs faced 'onerous conditions of release, and repeated court hearings — where they [were] forced to face the court without counsel — that [did] not move their case forward,' according to the complaint.
That suit came on the heels of a case in August 2024 in which Superior Court Judge Richard Bartheld declared that the defense shortage in Yakima — exacerbated by the departure of four attorneys, roughly a quarter of all of its public defenders — had reached 'a crisis level.' In that court case, a woman charged with driving under the influence had lost her attorney and waited three more months for a new one. To prevent the case being dismissed, Bartheld went as far as to amend court rules, declaring that the time spent reappointing counsel would not count against trial deadlines.
'When relief is not offered through executive or legislative action and the Supreme Court fails to address these issues in its rulemaking authority, it produces problems for trial courts that are unprecedented and unavoidable,' Bartheld said.
Washington is among the few states that do not provide the majority of funding for public defense.
In 1996, the state Legislature established the Office of Public Defense to provide supplemental representation for indigent defendants. Since 2005, the office has also been responsible for dispersing the limited state funding to counties — funding which does not surpass 3% of total spending for public defense services. Total state funding for counties in 2024 and 2025 was about $5.8 million each year.
County revenues collected from property and sales tax make up remaining funds, but in Washington, local governments can only increase their property tax revenue by 1% without voter-approved ballot measures, failing to keep pace with the rising costs of running a court.
'The total revenue that you can generate… [is] beneath the rate of inflation,' Young said. 'It turns out your employees won't work for only 1% increases year over year.'
In Ferry County, one of the least-populous counties in the state with about 7,500 residents, less than 18% of land is taxable. The rest is either reservation or national forest, making revenue from property tax particularly low. Public defense services are managed by county commissioners who contract with one attorney, located over an hour's drive away.
'Facilities are extremely limited,' said Bob Dean, Ferry County commissioner. 'Running [the public defense program] consists of basically, desperately seeking another lawyer if we lose this one.'
Recruitment is another hurdle. Public defenders have a taxing job. A high workload and relatively lower pay makes the job less appealing to law school graduates, said Colin Charbonneau, director of Spokane's public defender's office. On top of that, many are not apt to relocate somewhere rural.
In Benton County, 'we do not have a law school here locally, the closest one is in Spokane, which is about two and a half hours east of us,' said Keith Johnson, director of the Benton County public defender's office. 'We compete with other counties for talent.'
InvestigateWest obtained 2023 grant applications sent to the Office of Public Defense from 10 rural and three urban counties. All counties, except one that didn't respond to the prompt, voiced the same concern: Retention and recruitment are struggles.
'The increasing salaries in larger areas has decreased the available attorney[s] in rural communities,' Okanogan County reported in its grant application. 'In addition, we continue to lack affordable housing.'
Lewis County blamed the state's lack of funding for its issues. Its grant application said that 'unfunded mandates are absolutely the biggest challenge for counties across the state' and that 'other sources of funding will need consideration.'
For years, Yakima's public defense office has tried to recruit more attorneys. County commissioners repeatedly approved new budgets to offer 20% pay increases, $12,000 in sign-on bonuses and retention bonuses for existing public defenders. Despite the attempts, few applied.
For years, there were warnings. Back in July 2022, Kelley began sending monthly emails to the Yakima Superior Court judge and the director of prosecuting attorneys explaining the difficulty hiring attorneys and that new case filings 'outnumber[ed] the closing of felony cases.' In August 2022, Kelley decided to max out the county public defender office's capacity at 160 felony cases a month, with leftover cases carried over to the next month.
Seven months later, the leftover cases had grown to 223 — more than 150% of the office's capacity — causing further delays for new case filings.
It meant 'indigent felony cases first appearing in Superior Court on and after May 19, 2023, will not have in-house or contracted felony qualified counsel available … before July,' Kelley said in an email dated May 31, 2023. At the time, two dozen defendants in-custody would wait until July for counsel.
Yakima County's backlogged court directly affected its defendants, many of whom could not afford a private attorney.
'The heavy caseloads harm marginalized clients — often young, non-white individuals involved in gangs with traumatic personal histories — who need experienced attorneys to navigate their complex situations,' Vanessa Martin, a longtime public defender in Western Washington, said in an email to the state Supreme Court concerning a proposal to adopt new caseload standards.
The display on Mac Jardine's computer at the Grays Harbor County Department of Public Defense is a photo of Noah's Ark. When Jardine was hired to be the first director of the program, she was asked to 'build' the department.
'I had no direction, and they had no direction,' Jardine said. 'It's like sending me out to build an ark, and my name ain't Noah … I have built my office from scratch.'
Because administration of indigent defense services is decentralized in Washington, counties are operating with mixed models. Less than half of Washington counties have an office dedicated to public defense. The state Office of Public Defense encourages counties to create offices, but costs for space, public defenders, a director and other administrative positions are beyond the means of many rural counties.
King County employs all of its public defenders through the county. Grays Harbor County uses a mixed model of county and contracted public defenders. Asotin County in the state's southeast corner relies solely on contracted attorneys to deliver public defense services.
In 2022, Kittitas County in Central Washington opened its own public defense department with its first employee, Eileen Murphy, now director of the program. On top of managing the county office, Murphy carries a full caseload. She works 'at least 60 hours a week,' in an office with 'a lot of walk-in traffic' and 'phones ring[ing] all day.' She hopes in the future to hire more positions.
'That's just the reality of the job for me,' Murphy said. 'There are still some policies and procedures I'd like to put into place, but dealing with my clients and their cases is… my first priority.'
Murphy said this institutionalized model of public defense is better than relying on solely contracting attorneys because it holds people accountable.
'There are more protections in offices, because you have supervisors, and you have people that can review your work,' said Liz Mustin, supervising attorney of criminal defense programs at the Office of Public Defense. 'Prosecutors are county employees who get county benefits and retirement plans, and the [contracted] defenders are just kind of on their own.'
Critics of contract attorneys say they aren't as invested in their indigent defendants because they have other cases that might be more financially rewarding through a private firm. But for rural counties, models like this become the only way these services are possible.
'I think relying on contract attorneys is a little scary because you just really have to rely on the attorneys' integrity and intelligence and experience,' said Lisa Pruitt, co-author of 'Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice,' a study on indigent defense programs in rural Washington counties. 'There's a lot at stake for people if something goes wrong.'
Desperate for attorneys, some rural counties offer almost twice what urban counties pay contract attorneys. Asotin, Grays Harbor and Whitman counties offer $150 an hour for contract attorneys. King County, by contrast, offers $85 an hour.
Now, the state's system is at a crossroad.
Recent efforts to resolve Washington's public defender shortage have stalled in the Legislature — except for Senate Bill 5780, passed in 2024, which created the law student rural defense program allowing law students to gain internship experience in rural jurisdictions. Though not a cure-all for rural counties, it helps, attorneys say.
Yakima County Department of Assigned Counsel described the program as 'an overwhelming success' after two students who interned one summer returned the following year and expressed their intention to join the office after graduation, according to its grant application.
This year, Senate Bill 5404, a bill that would have revolutionized Washington's public defense by making the state pay for virtually all public defense programs, fell flat. Many are now anxiously awaiting the state's Supreme Court to decide on new workload standards, which would dramatically reduce the caseloads for public defenders. Last year, the Washington State Bar Association adopted the standards and asked the Supreme Court to do the same. The Supreme Court has no deadline to act.
If adopted, the new standards would set the maximum capacity for adult felony cases at 47 a year, less than a third of what it is today, but on a rolling basis over three years.
Current standards, developed from a 1973 study, allow public defenders to take on up to 150 felony cases a year. But felony cases are more complex than they were 50 years ago and require the acumen of an experienced attorney.
Public defenders say for a serious felony case, an attorney might sift through hours of body camera footage, order psychological evaluations, retain an investigator, create a defense strategy all while repeating the process for other clients and spending days in and out of court hearings. The stress adds up. People leave the field. Public defense administrators scramble to accommodate the constitutional right to counsel.
The state's Office of Public Defense and King County have already adopted the standards, but counties are not required to abide by them until the Supreme Court affirms it.
'We know as a matter of fact that there is a crisis in public defense,' Matt Sanders, interim director of King County Department of Public Defense, said in the Supreme Court's hearing on indigent defense standards. 'The people who are harmed by this system are disproportionately people of color, the mentally unwell, LGBTQ members of our community. And we know if this court does not adopt these standards, that this ongoing crisis will continue unabated.'
The Washington State Bar Association asked for contractors to conduct a workload study last year and chose the same vendor who conducted a similar study in Oregon. The bar association says the study will conclude in late summer this year.
There are many opponents, namely from rural counties, who say the standards would exacerbate the public defender shortage by mandating counties to hire more attorneys over a relatively short timeline without state funding.
'The real problem is that the additional attorneys needed to bring the county in compliance with the amendments simply do not exist,' Albert Lin, prosecuting attorney for Okanogan County, said in a letter to the Supreme Court. 'This is why I find the proposed amendments so perplexing — the solution to a supply problem is to create more demand?'
Over the last 20 years, three lawsuits in Washington have accused contracted public defenders of failing to provide adequate representation. Those lawsuits originated in rural counties that today feel like their concerns should prevent the Supreme Court from accepting proposed new standards that would significantly reduce public defenders caseloads and mandate new hires.
'To implement these standards as low as proposed will basically take away the very few attorneys that I have,' said Brooke Burns, Superior Court Judge for Asotin, Garfield and Columbia counties in Asotin County's grant application. 'Cases will have to be dismissed. This means that victims will not be made whole or felt to have secured justice. It will decrease community safety because defendants will have the knowledge that if there is no attorney, their crimes will go unpunished.'
This article was first published by InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org), an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Aspen Ford, a Roy W. Howard fellow, can be reached at [e-mail].