- The public defender system in the US is overburdened and under-resourced
- Many public defenders have excessive caseloads, leading to inadequate defense preparation
- Some places lack public defenders' offices and cases are contracted out to the lowest bidder
- Majority of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining, with very few going to trial
- The system disproportionately affects the poor, who may be coerced into pleading guilty
- Public defender offices may lack basic resources and have poor working conditions
- Some public defenders go above and beyond despite the challenges they face
- Access to a lawyer is increasingly under threat, with some states charging fees for public defenders
- The system can result in unjust outcomes, such as individuals being held in jail due to inability to pay fees or bail.

- The individual in the video could not afford to pay his bail and was stuck in jail for 59 days before pleading no contest to get released.
- In Florida, if you use a public defender and are found guilty, you owe attorneys fees and costs regardless of your ability to pay.
- The individual now owes various fees, bringing his total debt to $675.
- He was arrested for contempt of court for not paying these fees, despite receiving hospice care for a terminal condition.
- Eventually, his debt was paid by donors.
- The system in Florida charges vulnerable individuals for access to a broken system and needs to be fixed.

The Miranda warning includes the right to a public defender. It doesn’t include the fact that public defenders are highly overworked and grossly underpaid.

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♪♪ Public defenders, the only people who appear in court more frequently than former child stars.

Even if you have never come into contact with a public defender, you will know them from their important cameo in the Miranda warning speech.

You have the right to an attorney, and if you can't afford an attorney...

Oh, who will provide you with the dumbest f%&ing lawyer on Earth?

I have the rights to an attorney too, pal.

Yes, apparently even Garfield knows he has the right to a public defender.

And he's going to need 1 too, because he just murdered a lasagna.

The right to a lawyer is a pillar of American jurisprudence, but it's a right that we've only had since 1963, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that any person who is too poor to hire a lawyer cannot be assured a fair trial unless a lawyer is provided for him.

It's an idea so obvious, you can't believe there was ever a time that we didn't have it.

Like, corn on the cob holders that are shaped like corn on the cobs.

No 1 should ever have had to come up with those.

They're essential to the fabric of American life.

The problem is, our public defender system is currently massively overburdened.

Depending on the jurisdiction, anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of criminal defendants need a publicly funded attorney.

And the system is creaking under that weight.

Right now, there are about 20 public defenders handling up to 250 cases.

In New Orleans, for example, each public defender handles roughly 350 cases a year.

Public defenders in Fresno County often work on a thousand cases

a year when state guidelines say they shouldn't be doing more than 150.

Those are Gerard Depardieu wine consumption numbers...

And with caseloads that heavy, public defenders cannot possibly prepare an effective defense.

A study in New Orleans a few years back found that the city had some part-time defenders who could only spend an average of 7 minutes per case.

And that is not long enough to prepare anything.

If I only had 7 minutes to prepare this show, I definitely would not be talking about public defenders right now.

I'd be desperately trying to fill time by listing the Muppets in order of fuck-ability.

Most attractive thing is a sense of humor.

And I'm finishing up with Sam the Eagle, because you know he's into some freaky business.

And look, This is just the beginning of the problem.

Some places don't even have a public defender's office.

And some counties just contract cases out in bulk to the lowest bidder.

And at its worst, this can result in a system known as meet-em and plead-em, where the vast majority of defendants plead out and never even go to trial.

90 to 95 percent of all criminal cases, state and federal, are resolved by plea bargaining.

About 95 percent of criminal cases never make it to trial.

If Law and Order reflected reality, their episodes would be pretty short.

It'd basically just be, how does your client plead, guilty, Your Honor, and then this.

♪♪ And as a viewer, you would justifiably feel cheated by that.

And look, it is easy not to care about this.

It's easy to assume that if someone is being represented by a public defender, they're probably guilty.

But many are not, and some only plead because they feel they have no alternative.

She was arrested in a drug sweep, but claimed she was innocent.

She faced a ten-year sentence, and was stuck in jail because she couldn't afford bail.

She said her court-appointed lawyer urged her to take a plea deal, and she reluctantly agreed.

She admitted to a crime she denies committing, just to spend time with her children.

Especially because I would be willing to commit a crime just to not have to spend time with any children.

They are loud cesspools of bacteria with nothing interesting to say.

Oh, 0, you want to grow up and be a princess?

I'll tell you what happens to princesses, Ashley.

Now, after Irma pled guilty, the prosecution's case collapsed, and the other defendants who didn't take a plea deal had their charges dropped.

So she had to spend 5 years on probation, during which she was ineligible for some form of public assistance and wound up homeless.

And that is the problem with a system that can allot as little as 7 minutes to helping people make decisions that can affect you for the rest of your life.

Our public defender system is dangerously under-resourced.

1 report found out that 40 percent of all county-based public defenders have no investigators on staff.

That's 40 percent of lawyers forced to sit at their desks, Googling where to get exonerating evidence and hitting, I'm feeling lucky.

-♪ I'm feeling lucky ♪ -♪ I'm feeling lucky ♪ And the offices those desks are in could potentially lack basic standards of workplace health and safety.

Tough to do your job when you're competing with countless roaches crawling around your office.

But that is the work environment endured by employees at Augusta's Public Defender's Office, and it's so bad that the office had to close early today.

That office is getting to a point where roaches are outnumbering the lawyers.

And unless 1 of those roaches happens to have a law degree from the University of Rochester and can help take on some clients, that's going to be a problem.

As for New Orleans, their public defender's office has actually put up a crowdfunding page to help make up their budget shortfall.

And it's currently only raised 19% of its goal.

And look, nobody should be in jail because a Kickstarter didn't meet its goal.

If anything, Some people should be in jail because a Kickstarter did meet its goal.

Like this 1 for an actual giant inflatable Lionel Richie head.

-♪ ♪ -♪ You 2 gentlemen should be locked up all night long.

-♪ ♪ -♪ But despite all these enormous challenges, there are still some amazing lawyers, like Travis Williams.

He frames every acquittal and puts it on his wall.

I'm gonna get the last name of every case I've lost tattooed on my back.

Right now, it's only 5, and hopefully, it won't get...

But since the win is going to the wall, I decided the losses have to go somewhere and they'll go on my back, they're gonna be with me forever.

He tattoos the names of the cases he's lost on his back.

He's like Atticus Finch, only real, and not, as it turns out, a horrible racist.

--AUDIENCE LAUGHS- The point is, many public defenders do heroic work despite facing overwhelming institutional obstacles, including this incredible incident involving a Florida judge.

All right, let's go out back and I'll just beat your ass.

Now, that is clearly a disgrace, although I will say, fights like that would make jury duty a lot more interesting.

We find the proceedings to be fucking awesome!

Incidentally, that judge returned to the courtroom and called 7 cases without the public defender being present, and he's still on the bench.

And look, a bad judge can come and go, as the head of programming at NBC will

But, access to a lawyer is supposed to be a constitutional right, and it is increasingly under threat.

For instance, in 4 states, you can make so little that you qualify for food stamps, but still not be poor enough to get state-funded representation.

And in at least 43 states, you can be billed for a public defender.

Meaning, in these states, we have a system where conceivably, if you cannot afford an attorney, 1 will be provided for you, provided that you pay that attorney.

You can't tell people something's free and then charge them for it.

This is the American judicial system, not Candy Crush.

And for what this can look like on a human level, meet Larry Thompson.

In 2010, he was arrested in Florida for driving with a revoked license, which was a felony charge because he'd had multiple driving violations before.

Larry was sent to jail, where he applied for a public defender, which in Florida, incredibly, requires a $50 application fee.

He couldn't afford to pay that or his bail, so he was stuck in jail for 59 days, at which point he gave up and pled no contest to get out, and was released on time served.

But, in Florida, if you use a public defender and are found guilty, even by plea, you then owe attorneys fees and costs, regardless of your ability to pay.

So Larry now owes not just the $50 public defender application fee, but also an extra $100 fee for having used the public defender, and even another fee of $100 to pay the prosecution's costs.

Which is like taking, like a bully taking your lunch money and then charging you an additional lunch money reallocation fee.

On top of those and other fees for the crime he pled no contest to, the court then added partial payment fees each month for the next several months, bringing Larry's tab to $675.

And that all brings us to about a month ago, when Larry was actually arrested for contempt of court as a result of not paying those fees.

An arrest, incidentally, for which they charged him a $210 administrative fee.

At this point, they may as well have just slapped on an irony fee for good measure, because it turns out having no money in Florida can be really fucking expensive.

When they arrested Larry, he was receiving hospice care for a terminal pulmonary condition, and was so ill, the jail was forced to send him to the hospital, where he was watched by 2 guards and chained by his ankles to his hospital bed.

Luckily, he was eventually released, and his debt was paid by donors who'd heard his story.

But he still, understandably, could not quite believe what had just happened to him.

I'm not even able to pay money because I have to pay rent.

So I can't see them keep arresting me over and over to take me back to jail to charge me $250 more that I have to agree to or else I'm sitting in jail when I can't get oxygen in jail like I need it.

So they actually issuing me a death sentence.

It doesn't even make fiscal sense, because the state of Florida did collect the $885 in fines that Larry owed them.

But in doing that, they spent thousands of dollars needlessly imprisoning him.

And surely, Florida could have used that money for something they badly need, like, I don't know, rehab programs for meth-addicted swamp raccoons.

But the point is, 50 years after the Supreme Court gave everyone the fundamental right to an attorney, even if you can't afford 1, we now have a system where the most vulnerable people are potentially being charged for access to a hideously broken system.

And we either need to fix that, or at the very least, update the Miranda warning in our cop shows to reflect reality.

Anything you say, Cannon, will be used against you in a court of law.

That attorney may have 300 other cases that he or she is working on.

We could potentially have a total of 7 minutes to prepare your defense.

Billy Joel's scenes from an Italian restaurant is 37 seconds longer than that.

That attorney may be exhausted, unable to think straight.

That attorney is likely to be grossly underpaid.

Or working in an office crawling with cockroaches.

That attorney may pressure you to take a guilty plea.

a 90 plus percent chance that you will take that guilty plea.

That attorney may get challenged to a fight in the hallway by a judge.

1 more thing, that attorney that was provided for you may not be free.

You might even have to pay the prosecutor.

And all this assumes that we can even pay for that lawyer.

Now, do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?


Speaker 0: ♪♪ Public defenders, the only people who appear in court more frequently than former child stars. Even if you have never come into contact with a public defender, you will know them from their important cameo in the Miranda warning speech.

Speaker 1: You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to an attorney.

Speaker 2: You have the right to an attorney.

Speaker 0: 1 is a shift! -$%&&!

Speaker 1: You have the right to an attorney, and if you can't afford an attorney... Oh, who will provide you with the dumbest f%&ing lawyer on Earth?

Speaker 2: I have the rights to an attorney too, pal. And if I can't afford 1,

Speaker 0: 1 must be provided for

Speaker 2: me by the court. Shh.

Speaker 0: Yes, apparently even Garfield knows he has the right to a public defender. And he's going to need 1 too, because he just murdered a lasagna. And a person. The right to a lawyer is a pillar of American jurisprudence, but it's a right that we've only had since 1963, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that any person who is too poor to hire a lawyer cannot be assured a fair trial unless a lawyer is provided for him. It's an idea so obvious, you can't believe there was ever a time that we didn't have it.

Like, corn on the cob holders that are shaped like corn on the cobs. No 1 should ever have had to come up with those. They're essential to the fabric of American life. The problem is, our public defender system is currently massively overburdened. Depending on the jurisdiction, anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of criminal defendants need a publicly funded attorney.

And the system is creaking under that weight.

Speaker 1: Right now, there are about 20 public defenders handling up to 250 cases. In New Orleans, for example, each public defender handles roughly 350 cases a year.

Speaker 3: Public defenders in Fresno County often work on a thousand cases

Speaker 4: a year when state guidelines say they shouldn't be doing more than 150.

Speaker 0: A thousand cases in a year? That's nearly 3 cases per day. Those are Gerard Depardieu wine consumption numbers... -...at breakfast. And...

And... And with caseloads that heavy, public defenders cannot possibly prepare an effective defense. A study in New Orleans a few years back found that the city had some part-time defenders who could only spend an average of 7 minutes per case. And that is not long enough to prepare anything. If I only had 7 minutes to prepare this show, I definitely would not be talking about public defenders right now.

I'd be desperately trying to fill time by listing the Muppets in order of fuck-ability. And I'll do it now. Fozzie first, obviously. Obviously, you go Fozzie first. Most attractive thing is a sense of humor.

Then you gotta go Rolf. You've got to go Rolf. Then, you know what? I'm going Swedish Chef. And I'm finishing up with Sam the Eagle, because you know he's into some freaky business.

-♪ Freaky. -♪

Speaker 1: AUDIENCE CHEERS AND APPLAUDS

Speaker 0: And look, This is just the beginning of the problem. Some places don't even have a public defender's office. And some counties just contract cases out in bulk to the lowest bidder. And at its worst, this can result in a system known as meet-em and plead-em, where the vast majority of defendants plead out and never even go to trial.

Speaker 1: 90 to 95 percent of all criminal cases, state and federal, are resolved by plea bargaining.

Speaker 0: Now, just think about that. About 95 percent of criminal cases never make it to trial. If Law and Order reflected reality, their episodes would be pretty short. It'd basically just be, how does your client plead, guilty, Your Honor, and then this. ♪♪ And as a viewer, you would justifiably feel cheated by that.

And look, it is easy not to care about this. It's easy to assume that if someone is being represented by a public defender, they're probably guilty. But many are not, and some only plead because they feel they have no alternative. Look at Irma Faye Stewart. She was arrested in a drug sweep, but claimed she was innocent.

She faced a ten-year sentence, and was stuck in jail because she couldn't afford bail. She said her court-appointed lawyer urged her to take a plea deal, and she reluctantly agreed. Reluctantly agreed. She admitted to a crime she denies committing, just to spend time with her children. That is horrifying.

Especially because I would be willing to commit a crime just to not have to spend time with any children. They are loud cesspools of bacteria with nothing interesting to say. Oh, 0, you want to grow up and be a princess? I'll tell you what happens to princesses, Ashley. Google Diana plus truth.

Do it. Do it. Google it. Google it. Google it, Ashley.

Open your eyes. -...being a princess ain't

Speaker 1: fun, Ashley. -...being a princess

Speaker 0: ain't fun, Ashley. -...being a princess ain't

Speaker 1: fun, Ashley. -...being a

Speaker 0: princess ain't fun, Ashley. Now, after Irma pled guilty, the prosecution's case collapsed, and the other defendants who didn't take a plea deal had their charges dropped. But Irma could not take her plea back. So she had to spend 5 years on probation, during which she was ineligible for some form of public assistance and wound up homeless. And that is the problem with a system that can allot as little as 7 minutes to helping people make decisions that can affect you for the rest of your life.

Our public defender system is dangerously under-resourced. 1 report found out that 40 percent of all county-based public defenders have no investigators on staff. That's 40 percent of lawyers forced to sit at their desks, Googling where to get exonerating evidence and hitting, I'm feeling lucky. -♪ I'm feeling lucky ♪ -♪ I'm feeling lucky ♪ And the offices those desks are in could potentially lack basic standards of workplace health and safety.

Speaker 5: Tough to do your job when you're competing with countless roaches crawling around your office. But that is the work environment endured by employees at Augusta's Public Defender's Office, and it's so bad that the office had to close early today. And this infestation is nothing new. It's been going on for 4 years.

Speaker 0: That office is getting to a point where roaches are outnumbering the lawyers. And unless 1 of those roaches happens to have a law degree from the University of Rochester and can help take on some clients, that's going to be a problem. As for New Orleans, their public defender's office has actually put up a crowdfunding page to help make up their budget shortfall. And it's currently only raised 19% of its goal. And look, nobody should be in jail because a Kickstarter didn't meet its goal.

If anything, Some people should be in jail because a Kickstarter did meet its goal. Like this 1 for an actual giant inflatable Lionel Richie head. -♪ ♪ -♪ You 2 gentlemen should be locked up all night long. All night, all night, all night long. All night, all night.

Hey, jamba, jamba. Hey, jamba, jamba. -♪ ♪ -♪ But despite all these enormous challenges, there are still some amazing lawyers, like Travis Williams. He frames every acquittal and puts it on his wall. But guess where he puts his losses?

Speaker 6: I'm gonna get the last name of every case I've lost tattooed on my back. Right now, it's only 5, and hopefully, it won't get... Hopefully, I won't feel my back though. That's the goal. But since the win is going to the wall, I decided the losses have to go somewhere and they'll go on my back, they're gonna be with me forever.

Speaker 0: He tattoos the names of the cases he's lost on his back. That is a truly heroic lawyer. He's like Atticus Finch, only real, and not, as it turns out, a horrible racist.

Speaker 1: --AUDIENCE LAUGHS-

Speaker 0: Screw you, Finchy! Go fuck a mockingbird! --AUDIENCE LAUGHS- The point is, many public defenders do heroic work despite facing overwhelming institutional obstacles, including this incredible incident involving a Florida judge.

Speaker 1: All right, let's go out back and I'll just beat your ass.

Speaker 0: Look around.

Speaker 1: Oh, for God's sake. Oh, Jesus. Come on, come on! Come on, you... Come on!

Come on! Oh! 0!

Speaker 0: Now, that is clearly a disgrace, although I will say, fights like that would make jury duty a lot more interesting. Your Honor, we have reached a verdict. We find the proceedings to be fucking awesome! -... Incidentally, that judge returned to the courtroom and called 7 cases without the public defender being present, and he's still on the bench.

And look, a bad judge can come and go, as the head of programming at NBC will

Speaker 1: tell you.

Speaker 0: But, access to a lawyer is supposed to be a constitutional right, and it is increasingly under threat. For instance, in 4 states, you can make so little that you qualify for food stamps, but still not be poor enough to get state-funded representation. And in at least 43 states, you can be billed for a public defender. Meaning, in these states, we have a system where conceivably, if you cannot afford an attorney, 1 will be provided for you, provided that you pay that attorney. Which is absurd.

You can't tell people something's free and then charge them for it. This is the American judicial system, not Candy Crush. And... And for what this can look like on a human level, meet Larry Thompson. In 2010, he was arrested in Florida for driving with a revoked license, which was a felony charge because he'd had multiple driving violations before.

Larry was sent to jail, where he applied for a public defender, which in Florida, incredibly, requires a $50 application fee. He couldn't afford to pay that or his bail, so he was stuck in jail for 59 days, at which point he gave up and pled no contest to get out, and was released on time served. But, in Florida, if you use a public defender and are found guilty, even by plea, you then owe attorneys fees and costs, regardless of your ability to pay. So Larry now owes not just the $50 public defender application fee, but also an extra $100 fee for having used the public defender, and even another fee of $100 to pay the prosecution's costs. Which is like taking, like a bully taking your lunch money and then charging you an additional lunch money reallocation fee.

But they still weren't done. On top of those and other fees for the crime he pled no contest to, the court then added partial payment fees each month for the next several months, bringing Larry's tab to $675. And that all brings us to about a month ago, when Larry was actually arrested for contempt of court as a result of not paying those fees. An arrest, incidentally, for which they charged him a $210 administrative fee. At this point, they may as well have just slapped on an irony fee for good measure, because it turns out having no money in Florida can be really fucking expensive.

Oh, and 1 more thing. When they arrested Larry, he was receiving hospice care for a terminal pulmonary condition, and was so ill, the jail was forced to send him to the hospital, where he was watched by 2 guards and chained by his ankles to his hospital bed. Luckily, he was eventually released, and his debt was paid by donors who'd heard his story. But he still, understandably, could not quite believe what had just happened to him.

Speaker 7: I'm not even able to pay money because I have to pay rent. So I can't see them keep arresting me over and over to take me back to jail to charge me $250 more that I have to agree to or else I'm sitting in jail when I can't get oxygen in jail like I need it. So they actually issuing me a death sentence.

Speaker 0: None of this makes any sense. It doesn't even make fiscal sense, because the state of Florida did collect the $885 in fines that Larry owed them. But in doing that, they spent thousands of dollars needlessly imprisoning him. And surely, Florida could have used that money for something they badly need, like, I don't know, rehab programs for meth-addicted swamp raccoons.

Speaker 1: Just... Just...

Speaker 0: Just... Just... I'm assuming accurately. But... But the point is, 50 years after the Supreme Court gave everyone the fundamental right to an attorney, even if you can't afford 1, we now have a system where the most vulnerable people are potentially being charged for access to a hideously broken system.

And we either need to fix that, or at the very least, update the Miranda warning in our cop shows to reflect reality. -♪♪ Hey, freeze! -♪♪

Speaker 1: You have the right to remain silent.

Speaker 4: You have the right

Speaker 1: to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent.

Speaker 8: Anything you say, Cannon, will be used against you in a court of law.

Speaker 2: You have the right to an attorney.

Speaker 1: You cannot afford an attorney. 1 will be provided for you. I did

Speaker 2: it. Hey! We're not done.

Speaker 1: I'm not done. I'm not finished.

Speaker 8: That attorney may have 300 other cases that he or she is working on.

Speaker 1: That's not a joke.

Speaker 2: Literally, 300 other cases.

Speaker 1: We could potentially have a total of 7 minutes to prepare your defense. Do you know how short 7 minutes is? You know how short 7 minutes is?

Speaker 8: Billy Joel's scenes from an Italian restaurant is 37 seconds longer than that. Bottle of red.

Speaker 1: Whistling That attorney. That attorney.

Speaker 2: That attorney may be exhausted, unable to think straight.

Speaker 1: That attorney is likely to be grossly underpaid.

Speaker 8: Or working in an office crawling with cockroaches.

Speaker 1: You know what really blows him? That attorney may pressure you to take a guilty plea.

Speaker 2: Statistically. Statistically? Statistically, there's

Speaker 4: a 90 plus percent chance that you will take that guilty plea.

Speaker 1: That attorney may get challenged to a fight in the hallway by a judge.

Speaker 8: That probably.

Speaker 1: Guess where?

Speaker 0: I don't know. Guess! Come on, guess. Florida?

Speaker 1: Of course it was Florida. How could it not be Florida? I don't know the question.

Speaker 2: 1 more thing, that attorney that was provided for you may not be free.

Speaker 1: If you lose, you may have to pay him. You might even have to pay the prosecutor.

Speaker 0: Is that constitutional? It's constitutional as

Speaker 1: f***! You piece of shit!

Speaker 2: And all this assumes that we can even pay for that lawyer. How's the Kickstarter campaign doing? Yeah, it's going well.

Speaker 1: Oh, no. Not even close.

Speaker 6: Not good. Not good at all.

Speaker 4: Now, do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?

Speaker 1: No. What? No. Basically, you're f***ed.

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Public Defenders: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)