Louisiana's System

Public Defense in Louisiana Today:

Each Judicial District has a local Public Defender Fund, managed by a District Defender as an independent Political Subdivision. Act 307 does not promote any specific defense delivery mechanism, but allows local districts flexibility to adopt the model that works best for their district. Local districts determine their delivery model, utilizing one or a combination of the mechanisms below:

1) Assigned Counsel System: The court appoints an attorney from a list of volunteer attorneys licensed to practice in the state of Louisiana. If there are not adequate volunteers, non-volunteer attorneys may be appointed.  Presently this model is not known to be in use in any Judicial District.

2) Contract System: The District Defender may enter into a contract or contracts with an attorney licensed to practice in the state of Louisiana and living in the judicial district to provide indigent defense services.

3) Public Defender Office System: A staff office with full time attorneys engaged primarily in public defender work.

Seven districts have full-time public defender programs. The majority of other districts provide services through contracts with individual attorneys; none at present use an assigned counsel system.

Despite reform achievement, the most challenging issue for management of the public defense program in Louisiana has been accurate caseload data.  Efforts to improve in this area have been addressed by a pilot program for a web-based data program which is now being used in most offices across the state. It was not until 2005 that legislation required limited, uniform reporting data. In 2007, the board received the authority to enforce compliance with this reporting. With the recent appointment of an empowered LAPDB and the hiring of state staff, information about each judicial district’s investigative resources, intake procedures, budget, board composition, staff turnover, salaries, rent and other details should be forthcoming. See the District Reports page or the State Map for more information about select judicial districts.

At present, nine Judicial Districts lack any District Defender, three others have an Interim District Defender that needs to be confirmed by the Louisiana State Public Defender Board. Most of these districts are rural parishes that have spent years without staff leadership or, pre-Act 307, meaningful oversight by a local indigent defense board.  It is a LAPDB priority to fill these positions with qualified leadership and ensure that the time, training and resources exist to bring these districts into compliance with current agency policies.

LAPDB has begun to fill the staff positions that were created by the Louisiana Public Defender Reform Act. In 2007, Clark Gradney was hired as a Budget Officer with LAPDB. His role is to verify funding needs and tighten supervision of spending in Public Defender programs across the state. On June 2, 2008, Jean Faria assumed the position of Chief Public Defender. On June 16, 2008, Clay Walker began his tenure as the Deputy Director of Juvenile Defender Services. Ms. Faria will begin to complete staffing the remaining positions created by Act 307, including Trial-Level and Juvenile Compliance Officers, information technology staff and a Director of Training.

Act 307 requires LAPDB to develop and enact a number of specific rules and regulations to be enacted by the State Board. LAPDB has completed preliminary adoption of several regulations, and continues to work on many others in its monthly Board meetings. The Board appears to be taking a very deliberate approach to its regulatory work, forging new ground by working in coalition with advocates and defenders and expanding the mission of the new state agency.

This is a time of transition for public defense in Louisiana. The total funding for public defense is now approximately $55 million, with close to $30 million coming from State appropriation. The increase in funds has not created dramatic improvement in the reduction in caseloads, nor has it increased public defender pay to a competitive level (or even parity with district attorneys), making it difficult to attract new attorneys. However, all offices now have access to at least limited investigative services, most offices have seen some improvement in their budgets, effort has been made to encourage public defender offices to hire attorneys dedicated specifically to juvenile defense and LAPDB has created and launched a real-time database that makes it possible to collect uniform information from all offices across the state.

Board staff and members will build on these reforms to continue to improve the quality of public defense, supported by the efforts of the Louisiana Justice Coalition and its member agencies to ensure that poor defendants have equal justice under the law.

For more specific information about public defense in districts across Louisiana, click here.