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494 | Why did the Spokane County Public Defenders Sue the County Over New Workload Requirements? w/Colin Charbonneau and Victoria Blumhorst
01:07:24
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A
Foreign. Welcome back to Public Defenseless with Hunter Parnell as we explore the rot in the criminal justice system and what we can do about it. Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another fantastic episode today. I was joined by two courageous public defender leaders from Spokane County, Washington. Joining me today is Victoria Blumhorst, director of the Council for Defense. Joining us as well is Colin Charbonneau, director for the Spokane County Public Defender Office. And what are we talking about today? Well, folks, on Tuesday you will recall we sat down with Shannon Wilson and Stacy Lowe from the state of Oregon to discuss their remarkable victory for their offices. They sued the Oregon Public Defender Commission because they believed that there were unethical unconstitutional workload requirements placed on them by the new contract that the commission put in place a year or so back. Now we got to talk about that victory, what it means for public defense in the state of Oregon. And today we are continuing with that theme. But we are starting from the beginning of the litigation instead of picking up at the end. You see, Victoria and Colin have decided to sue Spokane county for what they believe are unethical, unconstitutional workload requirements that have been put in place by the county. Now over the past couple of years, we have covered extensively how public defender workload standards have implemented in the state of Washington. It's taken a pretty interesting route. If you want all of the nitty gritty details, I encourage you to go back and listen to our episodes about that story. But the 30,000 foot view of it is this. Thanks to the help of some incredible public defenders from around the state, the Washington Bar association promulgated some standards that made its way up to the Washington State Supreme Court. And over the next five to 10 years, public defenders need to meet the national public defender workload standards. Those need to become enforceable workload limits for public defenders around the state of Washington. The only problem, well, we talked about it when Matt Sanders was on the show. In that episode, we discussed how there was a millionaires tax being put in place in Washington and how originally some of that money was going to go to help fund public defense. You see, in the state of Washington, there is no money that really comes from the state to help with public defender funding. There's some incredible programs that the Washington State Public Defender Agency runs for the state, but they don't touch 95, 99% of the public defender needs around the state of Washington. So what we have here is a very onerous state mandate to meet the national public defender workload studies, but no corresponding funding from the state to meet those demands. Now, I know there is some ongoing litigation from several counties from around Washington trying to challenge Washington's lack of funding for public defense. Back on that episode with Matt Sanders, I believe I predicted that this outcome was inevitable, that there would be counties in the state of Washington who did not have the financial resources to meet the public defender workload study. Public defenders would need to start going unavailable and that might cause some friction. Well folks, here is the incredibly predictable friction at play. Spokane county believes that it has the statutory authority to set workload standards for public defenders as they deem fit. So they deviated from the plan to decrease year over year as was required by the Washington State Supreme Court. And as a result of that, they put in some workload standards, not really standards at all, that would require that public defenders engage in unethical, unconstitutional representation. So Victoria and Colin, after months, if not a year plus of advocacy with their county commissioners, reached the point that they are where they felt it was necessary to sue the county for their implementation of illegal and unethical workload standards for public defenders. That's what this episode is all about, folks. How this happened, why it is happening, why it is necessary, what it means for public defenders in the county and for around the state of Washington. And what I want to leave you with are the words of public defenders. These quotes are being pulled from the complaint filed by Victoria and Colin. If everybody wants to read it, I encourage you to do so. It's going to be found in a Google Drive located in the show notes down below in the show. But I just want to leave you with these words because many public defenders out there in the country can relate to these words. They have maybe said them internally or externally. And unfortunately in a lot of places in the country when people talk about this stuff publicly, they don't have the leaders who support them. And I want you to know that if you are feeling this way, if these thoughts are echoing in your head or maybe around your office and your leaders are not doing anything about it, I encourage you to point them to stories like Shannon and Stacy, Victoria and Colin to show that there are leaders out there who are willing to do something about this. To show your leaders that it is possible to fight back on behalf of your people, on behalf of your clients, so that we can get effective workload limits. Now, pulling this from page 23 of the complaint, Attorney Circumstances wrote the following. I have worked in this office for over four years and the whole time I have, I have supported a criminal justice system that enacts violence upon my clients. I have stretched myself thin, neglected my personal life, accepted more cases than any attorney could competently handle, and work countless unpaid hours. I have compromised my own well being on the belief that I was fighting against this criminal justice system. Instead, I was merely propping up this broken system. I will no longer be complicit. It is unethical for Spokane county to expect us to work more hours than we are paid. The structure rewards public defenders for doing as little work as possible. Continuing to accept new assignments would only perpetuate the conflict of interest that carrying approximately 50 open cases creates. I cannot provide quality representation to every or any current client if I am assigned more cases. This is not an easy letter to write. I understand that this letter does not help with this already difficult circumstances facing this office and our county, but my duties are to my clients, not to my ego or this county. The oath of attorney that I took did not say that I will support the Constitution of the State of Washington if my local government has enough money, but I did swear to never delay unjustly the cause of any person. I refuse to unjustly delay my current client's cases further, Attorney H wrote. The 71 cases that I am currently assigned will require an average of 5318 hours, approximately 75 hours per case to resolve. The year and a half that I have worked at CFD equates to approximately 81 weeks, which equates to approximately 3,240 workday hours. Assuming I worked every single minute of every single workday without taking lunch breaks, vacations, or sick days, I will need to work 2078 hours to reach the number of hours needed to resolve my current cases. Overburdening attorneys with these types of excessive caseloads not only creates ineffective counsel, but it also leads to hundreds of hours of unpaid work to keep from completely drowning. I spent the majority of October through December preparing and trying an attempted murder case that took three weeks to try. That case included one of the most significant amounts of discovery I have experienced on a case because I had too many cases to timely and effectively prepare for trial. Throughout the 10 months prior to that, I ended up working over 200 hours of unpaid work as I forced to cram months of worth of work into just over two months by working nearly every waking hour on that case. That was not fair to me as an employee, but because it is unethical for the county to expect me to work more hours than I am paid. And more importantly, that was not fair to my client who sat in jail longer than he should have in order to go to trial and be acquitted. Two of the murder cases I am currently assigned to contain more discovery than the case detailed above and will require several hundred hours to review and prepare for trial. The two life in prisons without parole cases that I am currently assigned to will also require hundreds of hours of work to resolve. Our Take to trial I have multiple motions to dismiss, suppress and other various pre trial motions that I need to file for multiple clients. My excessive caseload has not allowed me to provide my clients with the quality representation that they are constitutionally entitled to. Currently, I do not have time to conduct timely and effective discovery review and witness interviews, I do not have time to conduct timely and effective legal research in motion practice, and I do not have time to conduct timely and effective trial preparation. And because I do not have time to do these things, I am constantly in violation of my ethical duties. Taking on new clients at this time would place me squarely in violation of RPC 1.7 by creating a conflict of interest with all of my current clients. There are more quotes available for people to read, but I want to thank those attorneys who are willing to stand up and open court and make those records to admit that they were being unethical by continuing to take new cases. And I want to encourage others out there your workloads sound like this. If your working patterns sound like this. Maybe, just maybe, these are the types of records that you need to be making court as well. As always folks, if you're liking the show, like subscribe. 5 star rating 5 star review. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, via email, or on Blue Sky. If you are liking what you're hearing and you would like to contribute to the ongoing cost of production for the Public Defenseless Podcast, you can go down below PayPal, Patreon or Stripe, where you can contribute for as little as $5 a month or as much as you feel you can afford to give. As a reminder folks, I take no sponsorship money. I do no advertising reads this show is funded predominantly from the generous contributions of listeners like yourself and out of my own pocket. So if you're liking what you're hearing, maybe you want to support me while I'm studying for the bar. Whatever it might be, go down below and subscribe on Patreon today. If you do so, you will gain access to the the episodes a day early. You will get the video versions of the show and that means you will get to see my adorable miniature Datsun Puppy Beans who has once Again been scooped up from his mid introduction nap, folks. He's been getting a lot of very long walks which makes him especially tired right now. He is attacking me with ferocious licks. If you want to see how adorable this puppy is instead of just hearing me describe him, I encourage you to go below and subscribe on Patreon today. And now, without anything more from me, get to the episode Victoria and Colin, welcome to the Public Defenseless Podcast. How are you doing today?
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B
Very well.
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C
It's nice to be here.
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A
I am excited to speak with you both, listeners of the show. This is a long time in the works, but at the end of this episode you will all understand why this has taken so long. So thank you so much. I know you are both incredibly busy, so let's jump into it. What I do with all my guests. You know, introduce yourself if you could, just briefly who you are, why did you want to do public defense and give us a little bit of an idea of how you ended up in the position that you are in and when you do that. If you could just kind of briefly explain what your office does for public defense in Spokane, I think that would
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B
be helpful as well.
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So whoever wants to start us so
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my name is Colin Charbonneau. I'm the director of the Spokane County Public Defender's Office. I've been in that position for about four and a half years at this point, but I'm a longtime public defender. I have now been doing it about 20 years in entirety. Started in misdemeanors doing in district court, doing misdemeanor work, then moved to felony work, was a supervisor at one point in time, and then now obviously the director of the public defender's office. Why did I get into public defense? I actually did an internship in law school and got into the courtroom, loved the courtroom and ended up applying for two places that give you that experience, the prosecutor's office, public defender's office, and got a job here first took that and here we are.
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C
I'm Victoria Blumhorst, I'm the director of Council for Defense here in Spokane. I've been in this position for about five and a half years. I started at the public defender's office about six months after Collins started. And so we kind of grew up somewhat together there at the public defender's office. I got into public defense because I really hated law school and I never really connected with most of my classmates who were climbing for really like high paying, important jobs. And at a career fair I met met some attorneys from the Public defender's office. And they were the most normal people that I had met. So I ended up doing an internship with them. It was in Missouri. So I was part of the Missouri State Public Defender system for school. And I just fell in love with the work. And I moved to Spokane right after I graduated law school, took the bar, and immediately started trying to get a job at one of the public defender agencies here.
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A
So the other thing that I typically do with everybody, especially when it's the first time being on the show, I. You could just briefly, whoever wants to take this one as well, give us the lay of the land in Spokane, population demographics, kind of tell us a little bit about the community you serve, and then we'll talk about, you know, the acute issues that bring you here today.
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B
Sure, I. Well, I'm not sure I've got the numbers right.
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C
You can.
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B
You can math check me later. But a population of about, I would say half a million folks if you include the county and municipality. So the Spokane County Public Defender's Office, we employ here about 61 attorneys when we're fully staffed, total of about 87 employees. Victoria is the director of Council for Defense. That is our conflict office. In addition to that, we contract with private attorneys that will handle any conflicts her office can't handle. So if it goes to Victoria and she says, man, we can't handle that, we've got a conflict, comes back to our office. And at this point, anyway, we reassign that to one of the private attorneys that we have a contract with or that Spokane county has a contract with. So that's the general landscape. There are multiple jurisdictions, though. Spokane has a municipal jurisdiction. Then there's a county jurisdiction, and there's different courts within. So there's a municipal court that handles only misdemeanors that happen within the city limits. Then there is a district court that handles all the misdemeanors that happen outside the city limits but within Spokane County. And then there's Superior Court, where Victoria and I mostly operate in, although our office does both, that handles felony work, and we also contract with the city to handle any felonies that occur within the city.
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C
So I have usually six attorneys. We have three that are in our juvenile department. And then I have the rest of the attorneys do adult felonies. We don't handle any misdemeanors other than on the juvenile side.
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A
Okay, and then the last question to set the stage. How would y' all describe the politics of this area of the state, for those who are unfamiliar? Is This a liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian. Tell me, what are the political stripes of the county and city?
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C
I think we're becoming a little bit more purple in some areas, but I would say the predominant community of Spokane probably leans conservative.
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B
I think that's fair.
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C
Yeah.
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I mean, there's. There's certainly some progressive areas and progressive folks in the town. I think generally conservative is probably the fairest.
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A
Okay, fantastic. That helps explain kind of how we get here. But I want you to tell me a little bit. You know, we are going to build up to this lawsuit and kind of what gets here. But at the heart of this is a workload crisis. And to understand the workload crisis, we kind of need to understand how the Washington Supreme Court and everything that has happened at the state level with workloads, what has happened there and how has it impacted How. How was that felt in Spokane? How were the politicians. What was going on in your offices? When the state of Washington sets a course that says all of these counties, y' all are going to have to comply with the National Public Defender workload standard in X amount of years. You have to make reductions for workloads. Tell us what happened there. Tell us how this was received, because I think that's the first domino to fall to get us to where we're at now.
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C
I think the. One of the most difficult things for the counties in Washington is that the state doesn't fund public defense at the level that it should. And so. So the funding of public defense almost entirely falls on the local counties. And it's been a very difficult last few years where their revenues are not keeping up with their expenditures. As far as the. We don't have income tax here. It's just a sales tax. And so they're struggling financially to meet the mandates that the Supreme Court has laid out.
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B
Well, I think it's complicated, too. I agree with 100%, Victoria saying, I mean, it's almost unfair to some extent that the counties have to fit whatever it is, 95 to 95, 97% of all public defense, and I think criminal justice costs in general. So there is that part. There is that background that I think is important, because as we reduce caseloads, obviously the cost of public defense will go up to some extent. Right. The more attorneys and staff you have to hire, social workers, the more money that's going to cost. So that is an important context. The other part is, I think the legal landscape, and Victoria can jump in here anytime, of course, is a little bit complex. Right. There's been a number of Supreme Court orders, there's been action by the bar. There was the RAND study that came out in 2023 that replaced the antiquated 1972 or 73 version that our Supreme Court had adopted in 2012 or 2013. Somewhere around there, there's the bar guidelines, then there's the orders, then there's our own research analysis. There's case law, there's statute. That's relevant as well. So I think I'm not sure where you want us to go with that because it is fairly intricate. And from my perspective, having now deep dive this for a long time, I spent more time on this probably than I would have liked to. It's incredibly interesting.
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A
I think we'll come back to that as we go through the complaint, because especially some of the responses that I'm seeing from the county and city, I think are very relevant to how the law plays out here. But what I would like to learn a little bit more about is before the state starts putting all these obligations onto the counties and before they put all these workload ins. How would y' all describe the workloads that you were under? Were they excessive? Were they extreme? Did you have trouble recruiting and retaining individuals? Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah, no, all of the above on that.
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Right. I mean, we've. We've seen attrition forever now, and it was almost the running joke.
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Right.
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It's par for the course at a public defender's office that you're going to get people in, you're going to train them up, but eventually the workload and the. And the lack of compensation is going to get to them, and they're going to go to the private sector or they're going to go to a different government job. That may be where the stress isn't as much. For example, in our jurisdiction, there are other entities like the AG's office, for example, that tends to draw some of our qualified people. They seem to go or gravitate towards some of those positions. So, yeah, there's that. I mean, Victoria and I, as we said earlier in the introduction, we've been doing this for basically 20 years. I've been in district court doing misdemeanors, I've been in superior court doing felonies. And you feel it day to day. The. Not only the difficulty of the job, which is complex on its own, there is difficulties across the board. Right. You're dealing with people suffering from substance abuse and mental illness. You're dealing with, you know, adversarial system in General judges and prosecutors. Right. I mean, that's part of the job. While you're professional, there still be. Is that adversarial nature of the relationship, the business that's tough, that's stressful. And then you add on so many cases where you don't have the time to devote to as you think you should. Right. That's where we get into the ethics of it. Right. That's what it's all about is time to work the cases to provide the quality representation things required. Right. And so, yeah, so we've lived it. Victoria and I both lived it for years. And you just, you kind of just head down. I don't, I can't speak for Victoria, but I can tell you from my own perspective, there were times where I sought other positions, got offered some other positions. I just loved public service and trial work so much. I didn't go. But it's always there, it's always on your mind. Work, life, balance is difficult. So, yeah. So under the antiquated system, it was really challenging, not to mention the fact. And part of the reason for the RAND study and where we are now is technology, DNA. Right now there's a ton of body cam and a ton of time that is required on each case to fully review discovery, not only from the attorney, but you have to review that discovery with your client. So all of that experts, everything has become increasingly complex, which is fine, except for that means it requires more defense attorney time. Right. In order to again provide that quality, effective representation. That. That's what we signed up for. So all that put together. Yeah, it causes problems, causes turnover. It's still causing turnover. Right. I mean, it's still. Even though we have reduced now to phase one of the bar standards, which I think things are improving, I'm still having people leave and send me their resignations and move on to other positions.
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C
Really. Leading up to Colin I implementing phase one of the Washington State Bar association standards, they've been crushing caseloads. Colin mentions that we've both been doing this for almost 20 years. When we first started, it was. We had a lot of lifers. They were doing this for their career. They were sticking it out. They started as public defenders and they were retiring as public defenders. And we had a lot of institutional knowledge in that way. And really when I think body cams came into play and just the amount of discovery that increased, we had a change in leadership at the prosecutor's office that affected workloads for everybody. We started seeing those natural retirements, but then we just saw People starting to leave, like Colin mentioned, because of the work life balance and just the demands. For Colin and I, it took us, I think, like between seven and 10 years to move up to what we call senior attorney here. Usually start at Attorney 1, then move to Attorney 2, and then get to Senior Attorney or Attorney 3. We have people who've been doing this now, like three or four years who are moving into senior attorney position because that's just the nature of what's happened with the burnout and retention issues. One of the other difficulties for our county is the old standards was 150 felony cases. And our county never had any type of case waiting other than to count a case as less than a case. And so a murder case, a rape case, was considered the same as, you know, a theft, where the, you know, amount that was stolen was a felony level. And attorneys are only given, you know, about 12 hours to work on a case when they're expected to carry 150 felonies, which is just not feasible with the amount of discovery and work that needs to be done on any one case.
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A
Yeah, and the last question I have for you here is, do you guys have a sense of, you know, through your careers, maybe some averages of, like, what your workload looked like when you were in misdemeanor court, when you were in felony court, like, and maybe what they looked like before all of this implementation for other attorneys?
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B
Yeah, I can remember felony specifically because it's more recent, I think. I don't remember my misdemeanor workload, although, except for when I started, I want to say there was 350 to 400 files on my desk when I started misdemeanors in 2006. And they said, here you go. So obviously not a good situation there. That's an incredibly ridiculous number. And it wasn't always like that, to be fair. But then the felony numbers I remember is any given time. I don't know. I want to say I was carrying somewhere in the 70s. Typically. I don't know if Victoria is a different number, but that's the number I remember of open cases at any given time, which is a lot because it's a combination. As she just mentioned, it's a combination of cases, not all second degree theft cases that have two witnesses, very little body cam and not a lot of discovery. It could be four homicides and five sexual assault cases and maybe a delivery that's got multiple CIs and recordings and who knows, it could be a variety of cases. But again, the problem is time how much time do you have to devote to these cases and how quickly can and effectively can you do that? And so, yes, it was, I think, much worse there. It required more triage. I think it required more delays in cases. Right. More continuance motions. I mean, ideally, part of this is, and I'm sure we'll get to it later, but since it seems relevant now, part of it is if we have the time necessary to work our cases as we should be able to, then you're going to get quicker resolutions for everybody. It's going to be quicker resolutions for victims and their families. It's quicker resolutions for the court for jails. It's less taxpayer money than if there's people that aren't just being housed pretrial, long term at the jail while cases are pending. Right. So there's all kinds of ancillary benefits to this. It'll. It'll trickle down literally to, across the system and I think help everything. But no, historically it was problem and it was triage and then it was continuances and cases would take a long time to resolve. Then, as you just mentioned, the turnover. Right. So you'll have multiple attorneys on the same case. Right. You can have the attrition where, man, I can't handle this. Somebody will go out the door. Well, attorney X will come in and fill that spot. That's great. But attorney X only stays there for six months. Now all those cases have to go to somebody else. Attorney Y. Now attorney Y's got to start from scratch and review all the discovery, the body cam, the DNA, the cell phone records, whatever the case may be, and start again. And we've been see that problem, I think Victoria would agree, for a long time.
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C
And part of that is in Washington, we have qualifications for different types of case level. And so our Supreme Court has said you have to have either, you know, this many years experience as a defense attorney or this many cases that have been tried to a jury before you can take, you know, the highest level of cases. And so when we have that turnover of the attorneys who are qualified, when you have to reassign their caseload, the remaining few attorneys who are qualified for the most serious cases end up taking the majority of them. And it is just crushing what they're expected to carry.
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A
Yeah. And that's how you end up with the misdemeanor dockets which often get ignored because of the lack of severity. This is nobody's really nobody's fault because everybody, like, we got to get the felonies taken care of that's how you end up with misdemeanor dockets that are 300, 350, 400, even in the 200s. Like that happens because everybody gets pushed up. There's not enough people to do the misdemeanors, which we know are often the most voluminous in most places. And those individuals are also often the people least equipped to handle that volume because they're the new attorneys. So even if, you know, you saying 350, 400, a seasoned felony lawyer couldn't handle that, let alone someone fresh out of law school. But that is so often this story that we hear. You know, the felony dockets get the attention because they are the serious cases, but the misdemeanor dockets are always the place where things start to pile up very, very quickly. And we lose people. We lose people who had a passion to do this, which is hard to find, and they go straight out the door, and we're wondering, what do we do next? Okay, so we have this lay of the land. We know what the issues are. Talk to us about phase one implementation. Y' all hear that? Okay. Workload standards, they're becoming a thing. They're becoming enforceable. They have teeth. Y' all go to implement phase one. What are those numbers, and what's the response in the county to this implementation?
- [28:02]
C
So phase one was 110 felony case credits for attorneys on the weighted schedule that the Rand published, and then 280 misdemeanor credits, and then juvenile attorneys are held to those same numbers. And so even though they take a mixture of felonies and misdemeanors, we have to do kind of ratios to get them to their 110 and 280.
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B
Yeah, that's. So that's the phase one. So again, Prior, there was a case, as Victoria mentioned, the case was a case. Right. So then at that point, prior to July of last year, it's 150 felony cases. There's no case credits. There was no waiting. Right. And then I think it was 400 misdemeanors. Was the cap. Again, no waiting, no indication that, hey, you know what? A DUI might be actually way more complicated than a shoplifting. Maybe that should be a point and a half as opposed to a case.
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C
Right.
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B
Which is not part of the bar standards. So there is that. That built into the weighting now that we adopt it. I think part of your question was, what was the landscape? So that was the. That was the basic landscape. My apologies. That was the basic landscape.
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A
What was the response? From the city and the county, when you all start to roll this in, because it's got to be pretty apparent, right? The, the numbers are still high. They're still not where we want them to be. But the biggest shift for y', all, relative to some other jurisdictions, say, like King County, King county already had a case waiting system, so they didn't have that big of a shift. They still have workload problems. They have things. But the county is used to a case weighting system. That's the big change for you. And I know that's a lot of the consternation here from the county. So when you first go and say, like, hey, we got to do this Kate weighting system, what do your funders, what does the county, what do the people locally say to this requirement?
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B
Yeah, well, that's a great question. So it started off, by the way, doing our homework, right? Doing our due diligence, right? So we were, Victoria and I were in meetings. We were reading case law, we were reading statute, we were meeting with ethics experts. We were meeting with bar folks and associations. Victoria's on multiple committees that are part of the bar association. There were all these meetings taking place statewide. Hey, this is all coming down. There's a serious ethical dilemma here. What are we going to do about it? So there was all kinds of conversation and I guess research prior to. As soon as I'll give from my perspective and Vittoria can jump in from hers. But from my perspective, as soon as we felt like we had to do it, which by the time we had done all that due diligence, it was getting close to July, by the way, close to time to implementation according to the bar guidelines, we had looped in Department of Law and justice, which per our organizational chart, sort of overseas, or as the liaison between the board of county Commissioners, my office, Victoria's office, the prosecutor's office, I think the jail. So we had looped them in months prior. We had moved in the civil prosecutor's office because we get representation that way, saying, hey, we think this might be an ethical and legal requirement that's coming down from the bar, meaning we're not going to have a choice. This is going to be essentially a mandate. The way I'm reading it right now in the research I'm doing, Victoria and I had conversations to that effect at the last minute. We made the call after all kinds of meetings, all kinds of responses from the bar, etc. And even though we had looped them in, I still think it took them a while to really Understand what exactly we were talking about one and at that time, I think the impact too. So shortly after we adopted in July, unfortunately Victoria was out. But I ended up meeting with the Board of County Commissioners. It's a public hearing and providing a presentation on, hey, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. This is why I feel like we have to do it. And it's not a choice, it's an ethical requirement. So that gives you and Victoria. Yeah. Jump in.
- [31:44]
C
Yeah, I agree with Colin. We were letting, we were looping in who we thought we needed to loop in. It later came out that the board of County Commissioners felt like they weren't made aware and we thought we were doing so by going through law and justice. The reaction to public defense has always just been that there's not enough money to do it. And so that was, you know, that was the reaction to this. When the Washington State Bar association adopted their phased in approach, the counties were all provided like a caseload calculator where we were supposed to estimate the need of how many additional attorneys as well as support staff would be required over this. Because the Washington State Bar association has a three year implementation, our Supreme Court has ordered it to, that it can go 10 years. And so, Colin, I adopted phase one. And so we did these calculators that showed how many attorneys we would need by final implementation and how many support staff we would need. And it was, I mean, our offices would be growing exponentially to meet the demand. And I think the sticker shock of seeing that they were just very not receptive to what Colin, I believe was the only ethical way to move forward.
- [32:55]
A
Yeah. And I'm going to ask you about why you, why you feel that this is an ethical obligation, the law that you kind of are relying on. Because I think, think that, you know, that takes up a lot of this complaint and it is a very legally dense section of the complaint that I would like you to walk us through a little bit. But just a couple points to add One, like as y' all said up top, in fairness to the counties, yes, the counties can't afford this. This is true. This is true in Washington. This is true around the country where county based systems for public defense are relied upon. Those systems cannot fund what they need to do. Simply can't. Even in very wealthy counties. I've recently had on the chief public defender in Santa Clara County, Silicon Valley, they are having a workload crisis. I have, we've talked with Mano Raju, San Francisco. Workload crisis. It is when you rely on the county, it is just not going to work because counties often have to have balanced budgets and they have a limited tax base. They just can't do the money. Now, we can put some blame on a. You know, you said conservative. I'm going to take a gander here that some people in the county might like to prosecute people a lot and that I do think that this is incumbent upon them to actually see associating. The cost of prosecution is public defense. If we are going to solve societal problems with prosecution, this is how much it costs, and that includes public defense. And unfortunately for generations, that connection has not been made for most people that the cost of prosecution is public defense. And if you don't like how much public defense costs, well, you should prosecute less people. You should find alternatives because this is an expensive way to go about solving societal problems. Now, there's a lot of law here. There's a lot of ethics, a lot of stuff I'm familiar with, a lot of stuff I'm less familiar with because it's Washington specific. So as best as you can help people understand why do you believe that these workload standards implemented that are pushed down by the state, that these are obligatory, you cannot ignore them. You have to implement them. You have to go about doing.
- [35:01]
B
I'm happy to start, then Victoria can correct me wherever I've erred or gone astray. It's not quite that simple, Hunter, of course, because again, as I mentioned before, there are multiple Supreme Court orders. They're not all making sense. There was one recently, finally in December, that sort of tried to organize, collate, and put everything together and say, okay, here's now what we're saying going forward. Here's what we mean. I know there's been some different things out there. The bar standards were guidelines from a lot of people's perspectives, but again, not from ours. I think that's an important determination that the county certainly wants to make. Right. That they think they were guidelines. Well, I don't think they are. In addition to that, the authority we relied on was the previous county code, which is relevant to what you're going to get to with the lawsuit. Right. The previous county code was not anything like the current version that was adopted in December. Previous county code, I think, gives Victoria and I independent ability to decide what we do in our offices, how we assign cases. So sticking with that for one second, as managers, we're required to do that. There's also the rules of professional conduct in Washington state, as in every other Jurisdiction. And most of the rules are pretty much the same. Ours specifically is RPC 5.1 that says as managers, you've got to make sure if you're assigning cases that the people you're assigning them to can take those cases and provide ethical representation. Now that then triggers even additional RPCs. Right. 1.1 and 1.2 and 1.4, which is competence, diligence and communication with your clients. Right. You have to have time to do all those things. So we have to do that. We have to have conversations with our attorneys and we have to ensure that we are assigning cases ethically. And if we can't be assured of that, then we could be subject to all kinds of discipline from the bar up into losing our bar license. Right. So that is a real possibility through all of this. Right. I mean, that's part of the thing with the current version of code. But going back, so the old version of the code basically said, use, shall, adopt, and you shall comply with all applicable. And here's a word where I think it gets legally interesting. I think if you ask them anyway, Washington State Bar association standards. So that was the old code. Okay, well, to me, that's easy. Then that says we need to adopt the bar standards because how are the bar standards that talk about legal ethics timed for quality and effective representation not applicable to our current situation? Now, they changed the code since then, but the Supreme Court order in December also came down with language that said, well, we're actually going to define applicable. We're going to define it as relevant, which, as you probably know from all the work and certainly from doing your legal homework recently, that relevant is a pretty easy standard. Is it more likely than not, it's material to the issue at hand? And again, legal ethics, what's more important than that Sixth Amendment right to quality representation? What's more important than that? Right. So I think it is relevant. I think it is mandatory, which is part of the problem with, you know, the current version of the code, which I'm sure we'll get into. But anyway, just to give you that context as well, then there's also statute in place 10101. It's an RCW here in Washington state that basically says, well, typically counties can set case waiting and counting should adopt this, that and the other thing, which I think is one of the county's contentions. Right. That complicates things further then. As I mentioned earlier, we're consulting with experts in ethics. I, I'm not an expert at this point. In time. Although with every day and every conversation I have, in every case I'm reading, I'm getting more and more v1, in my opinion, but not there. So we're consulting with experts, and the experts saying, man, you. You don't have a choice as a manager. You cannot assign a case if you don't think they have the time to work that case properly. So it's really that simple when you get down to it. But the legal context is much more complicated. Honestly, I don't think the Supreme Court did us any favors. I think they could have come out and said, here's what we mean. Here's what we're saying. The bar standards are applying. The RAND study does matter. It's the only empirical data we have at this point in time regarding how much approximate time it takes to work a homicide as opposed to shoplifting case. Like, this is what we've got. This is empirical information. This is what the weight should be based on. The bar association does their own year and a half study of the RAND study and says, yep, we gotta do it. Then it tells lawyers, yep, you gotta do it. Then they give cles, continuing legal education to lawyers in this office. Lawyers in Victoria's office, hey, you gotta do it. And then even managers, hey, you gotta do it. So there was a lot going on there in a short amount of time. And I know I'm rambling a bit, but hopefully that gets to at least some form of an answer to your question. Victoria will probably jump in and fill in the blanks.
- [39:33]
C
As we were talking about before with the fact that we didn't have any weighting, our county was, I think, behind other counties as well, because a lot of the larger counties in Washington had some kind of case weighting as well as a cap. And so it wasn't that you were just an attorney was expected to do 150 felonies. I think that's what has been expected by the county leadership in Spokane is that it's not a maximum, it's also a minimum. Like, this is what your workload should be. And one of the things that the bar association said and the Supreme Court ultimately adopt is that we have to be looking and analyzing attorneys, open caseloads. And that's something that hadn't been a directive in the past, and it should have been because we're seeing those compounded cases. I mean, this is, you know, right after Covid, where caseload cases were not resolving because everything, you know, was shut down in that regard, or trials weren't going out. And so the open caseloads that the attorneys were having, just there was no way they were going to be able to give the proper time and attention to each client. And that becomes a violation of the RPCs because it's a conflict to not be able to work on one case because you're giving all your time to somebody else. When we move forward with this, which we thought we were very open about with our leadership, that we were moving forward with phase one when we ended up getting the final order from the Supreme Court or one of the orders that either in November or December actually said that counties can't increase what's currently in place based on this 10 year reduction. And that's what we felt the new county code was doing. It was actually taking away the six months of assigning at this phase one level and now asking attorneys to take more, which was, in our opinion, a violation.
- [41:17]
A
Yeah. And I think, I don't know the makeup of the county commission, but I know for people who are, I'm sure many of them are non lawyers, I'm sure some of them are lawyers. But for non lawyers, I think because they are not as versed on legal ethics and the implications they can have, they, they feel like, oh well, the law, we have this legal thing we can hang our hat on and like your ethics, those don't matter to me because I'm a county commissioner and I can implement county laws and those supersede. And I just don't think that there are two really practical reasons why that is such a terrible way to approach this. One, if lawyers tell you I am at risk of losing my bar card if I continue to act like this and you say I don't care, those lawyers will quit, they will go do something else and then you won't have lawyers to give cases to. So you might not individually care about legal ethics. But if the people telling you, hey, I can't do the job anymore because there's an ethical requirement that I stop at some point in time and you say they'll leave and then what are you going to do? You're going to have an office with 50% staffing, 40% staffing. I promise, when that issue gets up to the Washington Supreme Court, that's you're going to lose that one because an office can't function with so few people. The other really practical problem here is that what are you saying to people who might come here while you still have a county based system? So being able to recruit people relies on the fact that they believe they are going to a place with manageable workloads. Well, in other places in the state of Washington, there are counties who are doing a better job of this. So if I am a young lawyer in Washington and I look through a survey of the land and I go, where can I make sure that I have workload controls? If I'm an attorney in Oregon dealing with their workload crisis, where can I go in Washington? The answer right now, based on the county commission, isn't going to be Spokane. Because they say, well, we're not going to do that stuff. It is practically put aside all the legal and ethical stuff. Practically, it is cutting your nose off. That's what you're doing here, despite your face, and it's just not going to work. But if you are not versed in this, if you do not know how these cycles work, it's not surprising other jurisdictions have the same exact problem. So you've alluded to it. You say, we're going to implement this county's response. Not great. Start changing laws, start calling people out, asking y' all to resign. Tell us a little bit about their response, sort of from the winter until we file lawsuit.
- [43:56]
C
Well, their response was to amend the code. I mean, they thought that that would take away our ability to do what we'd already done. They had included language that we couldn't independently alter an attorney's caseload. Which the way that I read that is that if I have an attorney coming to me and saying I am at a point where I cannot ethically accept another case and continue to be in compliance with the RPCs, for all of my other clients, the way that their code reads, I would have to be like, well, too bad you're taking another file. And that's a direct violation of the attorney's RPCs. And then my duties under RPC 5.1 as the manager or supervisor, we adopt
- [44:36]
B
this change in phase one, we end up getting into multiple conversations with the county. At actually one point, I was fairly optimistic in that we were having productive work group conversations that involved myself, Victoria, some other folks from my office that were union, one of the county commissioners, member, or several members of the civil prosecutor's office trying to tackle this and say, hey, what do we have to adopt here? What should we change the code to? And at one point, there was a proposed amendment to the code that would include the bar guidelines. We worked on it. I actually was thought it was going to about mid November. I thought it was going to be implemented. And then, oh, man, great. We're all set. County's going to do what it can do financially. Probably doesn't meet all of our needs, but we'll do what we have to do ethically, which will be great, and then we can fight the state for more money for everybody. And here we go. What ended up happening is all of a sudden we got notice of a new amendment to the Spokane county code where sometimes cases were counted less than a case that they actually, and I don't remember the numbers, Victoria might have them, but that was even. It was even more absurd than the previous system before July. Then they do an oral amendment on December 16th. They're like, and this is after receiving letters from Washington Defender Association, Washington Bar association, many prominent lawyers, criminal defense and otherwise in Washington state saying, hey, you can't do that. They then do an oral amendment on December 16, which changes it to the current version that you've probably seen or the current version that's cited in the complaint where it does adopt some case weighting. But the case weighting isn't based on any empirical information or data. It's just made up. I mean, I think in one of the work groups we had, they had cold called some of the other counties and said that already had waiting, by the way, for the last 10 years. How'd you come up with your numbers? Those counties responded, well, we're like, we know a case isn't a case, so we know it takes more time for a homicide. So we're going to assign four to it and we're going to sign a DUI one. And it makes sense for us on a financial perspective. And it seems to, you know, help out the attorneys as well. And so they just adopt numbers that are arbitrary. So with that context, then I sent a letter to the commissioners after talking to Victoria and said, hey, I'm going to send this. Here's the issues we have. I'm not sure the Supreme Court order that came out the day before was fully factored in because as Victoria already mentioned, can't go backwards. So even if we want to, we can't. That violates the Supreme Court order. Ethics aside, for a second, that's a problem. And I'm like, hey, maybe they just, as you just mentioned, this, this is complicated. If you're a non lawyer, you don't understand all this. Let's just meet with them. So that was the idea, was to meet with them, explain that to them. Obviously that didn't work out.
- [47:19]
A
Yeah. And folks, on page 32 of the complaint is a table that I Think really lays out very well sort of the impacts of these changes. I'll read some of them. So the WSBA case credit for felony high life of possibility parole was eight. This drops it down to four. That means that under the WSBA standards, that's 120 hours per case. For the standards you now have, it's 44 hours per case. And as you go down the rest of the table, y' all included the percent reduction in hours per case. I'm going to read them off. 63% reduction, 68% reduction, 56, 51, 51, 26, 37 and 6. Those are remarkable changes to what attorneys are expected to do. More with less. And I'm imagining that this is coming at a time when you're not getting funding for new staffing either. Am I correct in assuming that?
- [48:18]
C
Yes, absolutely.
- [48:19]
A
Yeah. So you, you are literally more with less. Because at least I could see a good faith argument. They were like, hey, we understand what we're doing here, but here's some more. Try and meet this demand. But that's obviously not the case. This is something we see around the country, which is a lot of politicians who are not accustomed to thinking about public defense like this feel that deviations from the status quo are somehow like, oh, this is, this is. How could we possibly do this when they don't realize that the status quo was really problematic. It was very often unethical, it was very often unconstitutional. But this is what happens when we try and change the status quo.
- [48:58]
C
Right.
- [48:58]
A
A lot of people just assume that we are trying to do this just because. Just to stir shit up and be adversarial and be the thorn in everybody's side. Some of us for sure are, no doubt, but not the majority. The majority of us are doing this because we finally acknowledge our ethical and constitutional obligations to solve this problem. So I think the million dollar question is why file the lawsuit? Why take this route?
- [49:25]
C
I'm going to back up. So you just went through page 32 of the complaint, which outlined the numbers and what the case weighting was that was ultimately adopted by our county code. But Colin had mentioned this a minute ago, that the actual county code that they published for public comment had a class A felony as a weight of 1.5, a class B felony as a weight of 1, a class C felony A, 0.75, a misdemeanor high 0.5, all other misdemeanors 0.25, and a juvenile felony counted as one weight. And that was after months of colonized Sitting in on these meetings and being led to believe that phase one was going to be adopted as part of the county code amendment. And then we were going to proceed with a 10% reduction yearly thereafter in compliance with the Supreme Court order. At the time of the hearing, the day after the final Supreme Court order came out, a number of public defenders attended. I was actually in trial, so I was not able to be there. That is when they did a friendly amendment and changed it to the numbers you just referenced. So it really felt like there was not any bargaining in good faith or good faith in the. In the code amendment, but more of a punishment for what we had done by trying to ethically implement phase one of our standards.
- [50:49]
A
So why this route? Why not go unavailable, cause an unavailability crime? That's kind of what led down in Oregon. Then we get up to the Supreme Court. Why lawsuit? Why this route?
- [51:02]
C
Well, we have gone unavailable, so I don't know if you're aware of that, but we've been going unavailable by the end of the month for both adult felonies, juvenile and, I believe, misdemeanors. But I'll let Colin speak to that. Or are out of custody. So I don't know if you're aware of that.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, we've pretty much been doing it since. Well, I don't have the exact date, but shortly after adopting phase one of the bar standards. So there will be short delays in assignment of a case, depending on the month, depending on the number of criminal filings. But yeah, so Victoria's right. We've been declaring unavailability already. Why the lawsuit is. Well, we can't follow a county statute that's been changed. Right. So, one, from my perspective, it violates the Supreme Court order. Can't go backwards. So that's problematic. Two, as we've already talked about a ton, but certainly worth retalking about, is our ethical obligation that most people don't understand. When we say ethics, it's not morality. It's a legal set of rules that we have to follow. And if we don't follow, then it's fine. We don't go to jail or we're not charged with a crime, but we could lose the right to practice law. And Victoria and I have families, and this is the way I want to, you know, live my professional life. So if you're not willing to compromise that, it doesn't give you many options. Right. Because if we're just sitting there not following a county code because we can't to via the supreme court order or our ethical obligations, then where are we left? With nothing but confrontation with the county anyway. And at some point, you know, the courts need to weigh in here, I think, regardless. Right. So if there's a conflict, we can't resolve it diplomatically, which Victoria and I have mentioned. I think we tried to. They just didn't agree.
- [52:42]
C
It felt like we had no choice. We've done everything we could to try to educate them as to why we were making the decisions. We were. And as Colin mentioned, with the ethical responsibilities. Those are our responsibilities. And I think that they took it as a personal affront that we were using our ethics and that we were challenging their ethics in that process. And it was no, these are the rules we have to follow. And our rules of professional conduct trump your code. We have to do what is legally required of us as attorneys.
- [53:12]
B
Yeah. And the other part is, if we don't, what happens? So let's say I follow the code one, I risk my bar license, but let's say I don't even go before the board and I'm not. That's not a threat for some reason. I don't know why it wouldn't be. It should be. But let's assume that's the case. I've got 60 attorneys that work for me, and now I've put them in an ethically compromised situation where what they've got to go against their boss, they're worried about termination. What are they going to do? Now? Some of my folks are union, so they've got a little bit more protection. Victoria's folks aren't. So I suppose they could file a grievance. They can file motions to withdraw in the court. That causes a mess, not only in the court, but for clients and for all of those. Those other ancillary issues that come with it. So, yeah, if we don't do it, one, we put ourselves at risks. We put the county. I think we even put the county at risk, quite frankly. I mean, the idea that an. I don't. Maybe I didn't do a good job of explaining this. Maybe Victoria and I failed at doing that in our conversations with the Board of County commissioners. But to me, the exposure, or the greater exposure anyway, isn't the delay in assigning a case is that problematic? For sure. Do we want everyone that's charged with the crime to be assigned and avail themselves of their constitutional right immediately? Of course we do. But the bigger problem is what I refer to, and you know this, for many other jurisdictions, including Oregon and Massachusetts, the empty shirt Notion. Right. We don't want just somebody there going through the motions. You want quality ethical representation, you've got to have it. That's what the Constitution requires. So yeah, this is the only way to do that. From our perspective, as Victoria said, I don't think we had a choice. Not something we want to do. We still believe in Spokane county. We still want to work with county commissioners. We just want to do it ethically, effectively. And I think we're actually, I think we're not doing our jobs. If we don't and we don't challenge this, we're just, we're not effective.
- [54:56]
A
There was a real opportunity here for people in the county, not just in Spokane, but around the state because there has been a lot of coverage in this state from county commissions saying, hey man, the state, you have got to step up and fund public defense. I know that a while back we had Matt Sanders on from the King county office and we talked about that billionaire millionaire tax. I can't remember what value that was supposed to do just that and then got yanked at the last minute. I mean, with this going on at the entire time, I obviously am not following every single thing that happens at the state house. But it feels like with what's going on in your office in a very large populated area, pile in with some of the other conservative parts of the state and go, hey guys, you need to fund us because here is the reality of what's going on. You can't take that, that money away because if you do, here is the crisis that's going to happen. There was an opportunity for collaboration here. There was an opportunity to put this at the feet of honestly the only people who could probably solve it, which is the Washington legislature.
- [55:57]
B
And they didn't.
- [55:58]
A
And they decided to take this route, which is really unfortunate because like you said, Colin, like, you know, I'm obviously biased. This is my area that I pay attention to. But from what I'm reading and what I'm seeing, this seems pretty shut and closed on yalls end. But can you tell us what are they hanging their hat on? Is it just the county law supersedes these ethics that we did this lawfully? It's in our power to do so and therefore you have to comply with the law because you work in this county. Tell us a little bit about kind of where their argument.
- [56:32]
C
So I think that they think that they are the governing body who can formulate the case weightings and that we didn't have the ability to do so. There's been a Comment before, and Colin will say it better than me because he's a skier, but I think it's that we put our feet before our skis or something, something to that effect, and that only they could come up with case weighting. And we just disagree. Like, this is something that had to happen ethically for our attorneys, for the clients, for the community. There's a lot of pushback right now about how long it takes a case to get to resolution or to get to trial. And all of those things can be solved if we're given the appropriate resources to do the work that we need to do.
- [57:15]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's accurate. I never want to, you know, answer for somebody else, but having as many conversations as we've had, I think Victoria is accurate. The points of contention seem to be that somehow we did this on the. On our own and that we adopted a formal system for the county. That's not how it happened at all. I adopted a system under RPC 5.1 for my folks, had conversations. Victoria, she adopted based on all of the research and all the due diligence we did and all the conversations we had and case law, statutes, all of it, and said, yep, I got to do it, too. So independently, we decided to do that. So, one, they didn't think we had the ability or right to do that under. Again, it's. I think it's 10, 101. They think only the county can adopt a formal case weighting system and that we were essentially doing that by arguing that it's our ethical obligation. I think it's fair to say. Also, they. Again, as she said, I think that there were some that thought we were arguing that for some reason the county was not moral. When we keep talking about ethics as opposed to. No, no, no. These are just rules called legal ethics, and we have to adhere to them in order to practice law.
- [58:22]
C
Right.
- [58:22]
B
So I think there was some contention there. I think there was some contention that they didn't believe it was a mandate. They believe the bar association are guidelines.
- [58:31]
C
Right.
- [58:32]
B
Those are the RAND study. It's a study, but it's not required. Right. And this is, quite frankly, where I think the Supreme Court could have solved a lot of the problems, but didn't. And I know they're in a spot as well, and they're looking for data, and we don't have a lot of data, and I get all of that. But they could have simply said, this is more than that for these attorneys. It's not just a guideline. It's an ethical obligation. They chose not to do that. So that's to the county meant. Well, then you don't have to and we don't have to do the waiting or we have to or we can do whatever waiting we want. And that means we can assign more cases. We can you guys can do more that you're still, you know, fulfilling your ethical obligation then, which isn't the case. So I think that was those were some of the problems from their perspective. But again, you'd have to ask them for yes.
- [59:15]
A
And just folks to to say you can find a lot of that on the complaint. Really around page 32 down, you'll see a lot of the comments that both of y' all made and sort of the back and forth between y' all and the county. Big picture here. I want to take one step back here. So you what do you think is necessary in the state of Washington to remedy this issue? What do you want other public defenders around the state who might be facing similar concerns, similar issues to be thinking about or to maybe take away from this? Anything that you would like to really just say to people in Washington about, like this crisis could be coming to you soon. And here are things you can learn from where we're at to avoid these things.
- [60:02]
C
I think what I would want kind of policymakers and as you mentioned earlier, the legislators to understand is that, like you mentioned, public defense is a part of the criminal justice system. And so when you run on platforms of being tough on crime, you have to understand that the more cops that you put on the street, the more arrest there's going to be, the more referrals there's going to be, the more charges there's going to be, the more defendants there's going to be. And then therefore, the more need for public defense. So if you're funding one side, you have to fund the rest. And it also includes judges and court staffs and jails and guards and all of these things that interplay whenever you, I don't know, have 100 million dedicated for cops in your first budget, where's the rest of the system being funded? And if everything is funded in an equal measure, then we can, you know, live up to these demands. If this is what our, you know, voters and legislators want to see, we can meet that. If you're funding us all equally and reciprocal as to increases in one area or increases need to happen in another area. But the reality is there's a way to spend less money and accomplish all of these goals by investing in diversions and wraparound services and getting people the help they need and not just looking at locking somebody up and charging them with crime as the solution to all alleged criminal activity that occurs. We have a significant population that suffers from mental illness and co occurring substance use disorders in this county and I'm sure across the state as well. And if we could invest these money and things to get people help before they're already going down the criminal path or to interrupt that direction of their life, society is going to benefit that way instead of just having everything go through the system and everyone being locked up.
- [61:54]
B
Yeah. I mean, that's it. Right. The legislature and we've now everybody's talked about it and mentioned it during our time together today is they're the ones that have to act. They've got to solve the problem. I mean, before all this started, I was having conversations with county commissioners about how could we sue the state and make them come aware of this. This is before bar standards, before rand. We were having those conversations, working together. Hey, let's figure out a way to do this. It's the only way it's going to change it. States got to fund it. Counties can't afford it. Right. For obvious reasons. And Victoria's right. I think there's always this idea that, you know, tough on crime or safer communities doesn't involve public defense. It absolutely does. Right. Mass incarceration hasn't worked. It just doesn't. Are there some people that probably need to spend some time away, 100% violent crime, etc. Everybody can generally agree on that. The other thing everybody can agree on is everybody wants safer communities. What's the way to do that? The services Victoria just mentioned, if public defenders have the time necessary to work their cases, then we can do that. We can engage social workers, experts in mental health and co occurring substance use disorder. Right. We can engage those folks, bring them to the table for these individual clients, get them the help they need, get them back to their families, back to their individual communities, back to our community working and then hopefully not coming back. Then you see criminal filings drop, you see a need for fewer attorneys on the prosecutor side, on the defense side, maybe even fewer judges someday. In the long term perspective, either way, everybody's life gets better. If everybody's well funded, can do their job. As Victoria mentioned, if you're going to fund one side, you've got to fund the other. If there's an imbalance, then you get unjust outcomes, one which everyone should be upset about. It's unconstitutional. That's not what the Founding Fathers wanted, that's not what America's about. So if you want justice and you want community safety, then we've got to be well funded and we've got to have the time to work our cases.
- [63:44]
A
There's a real path. I wish that this more conservative area of the country really grappled with what the Constitution demands. Why is 4 out of 10, 5 out of 10, depending on who you ask, of the Bill of Rights, dedicated to criminal defendants? Why did the Founding Fathers not tell us how we had to set up our health care system, how we had to set up our roads? But they did tell us, if you are charged with the crime, here's all the ways we are going to protect you.
- [64:13]
B
Why is that?
- [64:14]
A
Why was this so foundational to the founding of this country? I think it's because the founders recognized the dangers of a government that was not constrained in that way. And it is very sad to see people that I imagine drape themselves in the flag and wrap themselves in the Constitution not grapple with that and not grapple with what the Constitution is supposed to mean. There are many ways you can advocate for public defense from the progressive, racial justice, conservative liberty. I mean, pick one. This is a very easy thing to get behind, but because so many people are so caught up in public, safety is only cages. And I hate people who are accused of crimes. They are actually demonstrating. The very worry that I think the founders had is that a very reactionary population could just give a shit less if those people who are accused of crimes get any rights and are treated fairly at all. And I hope that this lawsuit brings attention that, as y' all have said to the state, because until the state steps up, I think we're going to be seeing more of things like this happening around the state of Washington. Victoria, Colin, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for your courage. I say this to all the chief public defenders out there, especially being in a state where we do not have leaders willing to do these things. I really want to, like, thank both of you for stepping up for your. For your people, for your community. I know it's not easy to do. It comes with a lot of stress that you don't need because you have a lot of shit going on. So thank you both for doing this. Where can people contact you, write to you? Where would you like to direct people towards if they'd like to learn more about this or potentially reach out if they have any questions? If, especially if they're in the state
- [65:57]
C
of Washington, email's best for me. I don't have a social media presence so it's it's V and then my last name blumhorst and@spokane county.gov same here
- [66:08]
B
and emails much quicker response from me anyway and that's C. Charbonneau spokanecounty.gov Fantastic.
- [66:15]
A
Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. Best of luck. Hoping for some good news soon and we'll speak shortly.
- [66:20]
B
Thanks so much. Appreciate you having us.
- [66:21]
A
Thanks again everybody for tuning in today. If you like today's episode and you're liking the show, please remember to like subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review, and share with anyone who you might think is interested in learning more about our rotten criminal legal system. If you would like to contact me with any questions, concerns, feedback or potential guest recommendations, you can go to publicdefenselessmail.com and shoot me an email. You can also find more about the show at publicdefenseless.com or on Instagram at Public Defenseless Podcast or on Twitter at P Defenseless Pod. As always folks, thank you again for your support. If you have the means to do so, it would be great if you could go down to the Show Notes, go to Patreon and subscribe for as little as $5 a month where you can get access to the show a day early and the video versions of the show. Again, thank you all so much for the support and hope to see you soon.