The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender had 174,489 active cases in fiscal year 2023, according to its fiscal 2024 budget request. The caseload was spread across the organization’s 21 regional trial offices, its appellate division and overseen by its central administrative office. For the current fiscal year, the legislature appropriated OSPD a total of 889 full-time employees, with 535 of those employees attorneys, according to the organization’s website.
While each attorney in the system manages a different number of cases, that broadly averages out to 326 cases for each attorney for the most recent fiscal year. According to the caseload standard published in the National Public Defense Workload Study by the RAND Corporation, that’s nearly double the amount of cases an attorney should handle for its lowest level of case weight, probation and parole violations.
For felonies, the data is even more stark. According to the same study, the caseload standard for a mid-level felony is 36 annually, and even lower for high-level felony cases.
The Defenders Union of Colorado, a union established in 2022 for public defenders, is backing House Bill 24-1289, which would task OSPD with conducting a workload study to examine the workload of public defenders in Colorado. The study would have a due date of November 2025, and would provide a roadmap to institute workload standards for attorneys in the office.
Kayleigh TenBarge, a public defender and legislative co-chair at DUC, told Law Week that caseload was a problem for public defenders.
“I think public defenders have entirely too many cases, and more than we could ever really properly handle,” said TenBarge.
TenBarge said the effect of this caseload is twofold. It inhibits public defenders from dedicating the necessary time to their clients’ cases and OSPD loses a lot of good workers from burnout.
“What we decided to do is that we wanted legislation that would require OSPD to actually collect some data about not only on what are the cases we’re working, but perhaps more importantly how much time we should be spending on these cases in order to provide ethical representation,” said TenBarge.
James Hardy, a 14-year veteran of the appellate division of the public defender and communications co-chair at DUC, gave an example on the caseload of one of his former colleagues. Hardy said the colleague ran his caseload from January to October of 2023.
“Plugging in the hours per type of case, standards that RAND created, and then using the various felony levels of various cases he had in his caseload, and he came out with the figure for just those nine to ten months that he would have had to have worked over 6,000 hours to ethically represent his caseload,” said Hardy.
The imbalance between the time required for the cases a public defender is assigned and the amount of hours in the day has a significant impact on public defenders, and is a large factor in the significant attrition rate of public defenders in the state, according to Hardy and TenBarge. TenBarge said only 39% of public defender employees have five years of experience or more.
“I think that public defenders are a lot of really, really hard-working people, and a lot of people who care, but the reality is that there’s only so many hours in the day,” said TenBarge. “And I think that it ends up being not only physically crushing, but emotionally and mentally crushing too. It’s a lot of people who want to do a good job, and then burn out, because they’re trying and you’re Sisyphus just kind of trying to push the boulder up the hill.”
Reps. Stephanie Vigil and Junie Joseph and Sens. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and Dylan Roberts, all Democrats, are sponsoring the bill. The bill had its first hearing on March 6 in the House Judiciary Committee.
Vigil told the committee the stakeholding process on the bill had been really intense over a relatively short period of time as they worked to get all the organizations on the same page about the bill.
“I think everybody’s very passionate about two things,” said Vigil. “Ensuring everyone has the right to defense as our Constitution mandates and also ensuring that all the public defenders who provide that service are well supported and have everything they need.”
Megan Ring, the Colorado State Public Defender, told the committee that to do public defense work well they need resources, and the office was committed to an updated study on workloads.
“We are committed to taking the information from that study, continuing to ask for the resources we need, and to continue to manage workload from across the state as we’ve always done,” said Ring.
But Ring added that time or some data can’t be equated to ethical representation, and OSPD needed the ability and flexibility to provide ethical representation to clients based on their individual needs.
David Kaplan, senior counsel at Stimson LaBranche Hubbard and a former Colorado State Public Defender, told the legislature OSPD needs adequate compensation and appropriate caseload management, but it also needs to maintain its independence.
“We need more money, and you guys decide whether you’re going to give it or not,” said Kaplan. “But, whatever legislation passes, maintain the independence of the organization, don’t require it to do things that it is in the best position to know how to do.”
While the panel from OSPD did share their concerns about the bill, James Karbach, who works on legislative policy and external communications for OSPD, told the committee the organization does support the bill as amended.
Five amendments were passed by the House Judiciary Committee. Included in the amendments were clarifications on the methodology of the study, changes to the language of the bill and changes to the timeline of the study and its pursuant implementation.
The bill passed on a 7-3 committee vote, with one representative excused, and awaits a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee.