On September 3, Tina Peng, a lawyer in New Orleans’ muchbeleaguered Public Defenders Office, which is facing furloughs and layoffs due to poor funding structures, decided to take her case to the American public. In an op-edshe penned for The Washington Post, she did for her office what she often does for her indigent clients when appearing before judges: She plead for mercy.
Wrote Peng:
I went to law school to be a public defender. My frustration with our office’s persistent underfunding is not that it forces me to work long hours, represent numerous clients or make far less money than I would at a private law firm. It is that when we are constantly required to do more with less, our clients suffer. …
Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the district attorney’s. The American Bar Association recommends that public defenders not work on more than 150 felony cases a year. In 2014, I handled double that.
Upon reading this, New Orleans Criminal District Court judge Arthur Hunter summoned Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton to his court for a brief hearing to discuss Peng’s op-ed. Bunton affirmed everything Peng attested to in that court session, and now there will be a fuller hearing on the matterin November.
[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...ender-system/406858/]
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