Structuring the Public Defender

By Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe

While the public defender is critical to protecting individual rights in the U.S. criminal process, state governments take remarkably different approaches to distributing public defense services. Some states organize indigent defense as a function of the executive branch of state governance; others administer indigent defense through the judicial branch. The remaining state governments do not place the public defender within any branch of state government, instead delegating its management to local counties. This administrative choice has important implications for the public defender’s efficiency and effectiveness. It influences how the service will be funded and the extent to which the public defender, as an institution, will respond to the particular interests of its local community. So, which branch of government should oversee the public defender? Should the public defender exist under the same branch of government overseeing both the prosecutor and police—two entities the public defender seeks to hold accountable in the criminal process? Should the provision of services be housed under the judicial branch—although this branch is ordinarily tasked with being a neutral arbiter in criminal proceedings? Perhaps a public defender that is independent of statewide governance is ideal, even if that might render it a lesser player among the many government agencies battling at the state level for limited financial resources. This Article answers the question of state assignment by engaging in an original examination of each state’s architectural choices for the public defender. Its primary contribution is to enrich our current understanding of how each state manages the public defender and how that decision influences the institution’s funding and ability to adhere to ethical and professional mandates. It concludes the public defender should be an important executive function in this modern era of mass criminalization and articulates modifications that would improve such a state design by insulating it from pressure by other system actors.

106 Iowa L. Rev. 113 (2020)