Berrien County’s broken public defender system

When a major report a year ago concluded that Michigan’s public defender system was in a state of “constitutional crisis,” one of the major problems that was identified was that every county had its own system for providing indigent defense, with no state funding or oversight.

That meant the quality and availability of indigent defense could vary wildly from county to county — good in some, bad in others. The Herald Palladium newspaper takes a look at the system in Berrien County, which has been considered one of the worst in the state:

According to a study by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, a full-time indigent defense lawyer in one year can capably handle no more than 150 felony cases, 400 misdemeanors or 200 juvenile delinquency cases.

Contract holders in Berrien County have a heavier caseload. In 2004, six indigent defense lawyers handled 4,479 felony and misdemeanor cases, an average of 746 each. One lawyer regularly handled more than 1,000 cases a year, in addition to a private practice, the suit alleges.

That’s because in Berrien county, private attorneys are paid a flat fee for the whole year to handle those cases and the pay remains the same no matter how many cases they handle. And that’s not even the worst in the state. In Detroit, public defenders handle a staggering average of 2,400 cases a year.

But it’s still plenty bad. When I interviewed Amy Bach, author of the book Ordinary Injustice, on my radio show, she said she had spent several weeks in Berrien County looking at their system and said it was one of the worst she had ever seen up close. She decided, however, to focus on another county down south instead.