Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys Archives

Missouri’s prosecutors and public defenders are drowning in cases

February 10, 2020 By Alisa Nelson

Missouri’s prosecutors and public defenders are experiencing similar problems – heaping caseloads and not enough attorneys. During a state House Budget Committee hearing, Missouri Public Defender System Director Mary Fox says her office wants an extra $3.3 million in state funding to make a nice dent in the waiting list of poor Missourians requesting legal services.

Missouri’s prosecutors and public defenders are both drowning in cases

“It has reached about 6,000 cases throughout the state of Missouri, which is quite a large number,” says Fox. “Most of those people are not confined. Some of them are confined. It is a problem not only for the people who qualify for services but also for the courts. While I don’t agree with it, I think the problem lies in the fact that the court wants to move the case through the system and doesn’t want someone lingering without counsel. And so, as sort of an unintended consequence of that, now that we are attempting to limit the cases because of the Supreme Court rules that have come down, we now have these wait lists where we can’t represent everyone.”

Fox says her office closes more than 61,000 cases annually among nearly 400 attorneys. In fiscal year 2019, about 12,000 were felony drug cases.

Last year, the system contracted out about 13,000 cases. Fox wants the waiting list to also be handled by some private practice attorneys.

“There is a benefit to that, in that we could get them out to attorneys throughout the state,” she says. “There are some problems also. One of those is it costs more.”

The figure is a far cry from the 321 attorneys Fox says the system would need to follow the Constitution. Instead, the $3.3 million her office is requesting to help with the wait list, it would equate to hiring 39 new full-time attorneys.

She says caseloads could be reduced by limiting which cases are prosecuted.

“I’m not saying don’t prosecute cases because a crime has occurred. I’m saying do a thorough investigation before you make the decision to issue a case,” Fox says. “Just by taking that simple step, the case numbers will drop both for the prosecutors and for the defense counsel.”

She also wants the Legislature and courts to put an emphasis on diversion programs, substance treatment courts and getting mentally ill people services they need.

“If folks are diverted away from the criminal justice system, they would not need our services. I can tell you that I’ve had personal experience with the Diversion court in the city of St. Louis and it’s been a good project,” she says. “Every time we get angry, we can’t charge somebody with a crime. We have got to look a little more closely at who are we bringing into the criminal justice system and why are we bringing them there.”

As for Missouri prosecutors, a new survey of 41% of the offices shows they averaged more than 1,200 felony cases and 1,800 misdemeanor cases reviewed in 2018. During a press conference held by the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Christian County Prosecutor Amy Fite says they are doing plenty of other things.

“Those numbers alone are significantly higher than any caseload that a public defender is currently carrying based on what they’re trying to do with regards to wait lists and having open cases. Just this number alone far exceeds their numbers, just to give some perspective with regards to the workload that the prosecutors are carrying,” Fite says. “Every day there’s multiple cases being reviewed and charged. And this is just a small fraction of the work that prosecutors do. They would be appearing in court. They’re going to be providing guidance to law enforcement officers. They’re reviewing search warrants. They’re going to be preparing for trial. They’re going to be meeting with witnesses and victims. Everybody has a plate that is overflowing with work to be done. We have to make a determination with regards to how we can best serve those. We have to be able to serve them both effectively and efficiently. We have to be able to afford victims across this state all the rights they are guaranteed by statute as well as by the Missouri Constitution.”

Most of the prosecutors’ offices are also handling civil matters and about 13% of respondents are dealing with juvenile cases. They also provide community programs, including child advocacy centers and community engagement programs.

Most of the offices are funded through local tax dollars. MAPA Executive Director Darrell Moore says staff turnover and low pay are major issues for the prosecuting attorney offices. The survey, conducted by the National Prosecutors’ Consortium, shows the starting salaries of recently graduated law students hired as Missouri prosecutors ranged from a minimum of $26,000 to a maximum of $60,000. The average is about $51,000.

On average, Missouri prosecutors’ offices have 7 full-time and less than one part-time attorneys. They also have an average of 12 full-time and less than one part-time non-attorneys.

About 85% of survey respondents reported engaging in problem solving courts or other programs that offered alternatives to jail. Drug/alcohol treatment (76%) and community service (73%) were the most common ones. Anger management or domestic violence diversion was offered in 64% of counties. Training/education programs (51%) and mental health services (44%) were also offered.

Prosecutors have used creative ways to try and keep some individuals out of the criminal justice system. The St. Charles County Prosecutor’s Office is using a program called TREND – Taking Responsibility and Empowering New Direction -for first-time non-violent offenders between 17 and 24 years old.

“The cycle that we all see with those types of cases is that once a person is caught up in the system due to a variety of circumstances, whether that might be addiction, whether that’s socioeconomic issues, or what have you, they find themselves unable to get out of the system,” says MAPA President Tim Lohmar.

Lohmar, who serves as the St. Charles County Prosecutor Attorney in eastern Missouri, says TREND is a classroom setting in court that aims to give students a fresh start. They must attend every other week for six months. Self-improvement topics include job searching skills, financial responsibility and job interviewing skills. If they complete the program, they walk out of court with a dismissal in their hand.

Eric Zahnd, the Platte County Prosecutor in western Missouri, says the Handle With Care program in his county uses a web-based app to let law enforcement report when they’ve responded to a home where children are present. Officers can log into the system, enter their badge number, the address of the incident and that’s that.

The next day, school administrators can log onto the program, find the address where the incident happened and find out if the children are enrolled in their district. The information is passed along to school counselors and teachers to be on the lookout if the students act out or appear upset.

School officials can then intervene if needed and handle the kids with extra care. Administrators do not receive additional details about what happened at the home – just to let them know that something potentially stressful occurred.

“We believe it will go a long way to decreasing childhood trauma, which often leads later to children becoming associated with the juvenile system and sometimes with the adult criminal system. If we can deal with those adverse childhood experiences early, help children work through that problem, we hope we’re helping generations of children avoid being otherwise involved with the criminal justice system,” says Zahnd.

In southwest Missouri’s Greene County, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson, says the Family Justice Center recognizes the criminal justice system is not sufficient by itself to deal with domestic violence. The public-private partnership is a co-located site working to help victims.

For example, a victim could find services from the legal services agency to help with applying for a protection order, child custody issues, the dissolving of a marriage, emergency housing and rape crisis help.

“The benefits of this are that we provide more efficient, coordinated services to victims. It can be a very daunting task to be a victim of domestic assault and have to deal with the aftermath of this,” says Patterson. “It also increases the accountability that we can achieve on offenders because victims cooperate more with law enforcement and prosecution in those cases.”

Patterson says the model has been shown in other communities across the country to reduce domestic violence homicide rates as well as recidivism rates among domestic batterers.

Prosecutors’ association urges digital warrants in DWI cases

July 7, 2014 By Mike Lear

A policy that seeks to ensure evidence is obtained from suspected drunk drivers has been endorsed by the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

The Association has issued the first of its recommended best practices to the state’s prosecuting attorneys, and one of those is that prosecutors develop a “no refusal” policy for DWI cases, and work with law enforcement to develop standard procedures.

People pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving in Missouri have the right to refuse a breath test. An officer can request a warrant for a blood sample from a suspect, but paper warrants can require officers to seek approval from the prosecutor and then physically visit a judge to secure the warrant. The time involved means such warrants are often not sought.

Under a “no refusal” policy, law enforcement can seek a digital search warrant that can be processed and authorized by the court electronically. Officers can have a warrant in minutes.

Executive Director Jason Lamb urges all prosecutors to institute such a policy.

“Aggressive and consistent DWI investigation and prosecution really amounts to homicide prevention,” says Lamb.

Lamb says such policies give law enforcement another tool to be persistent in their pursuit of DWI investigations.

“In a burglary case there’s evidence, usually, of some time of stolen property or burglar’s tools and we wouldn’t hesitate to seek a search warrant in that case. In a murder case there might be evidence of a weapon and we wouldn’t hesitate to seek a warrant in that case. In a rape case there might be evidence of DNA and we wouldn’t hesitate to seek a search warrant in that case,” says Lamb. “In DWI cases the best evidence is of course inside the defendant’s body – the blood alcohol content. It’s simply a matter of seeking a search warrant to obtain that evidence, to have it available for trial in every single DWI case.”

Mothers Against Drunk Driving backs the institution of “no refusal” policies. Director of Court Monitoring Bud Balke says it would allow officers to move more quickly to secure evidence.

“With the refusal policy in place we think it’s a wonderful system. We believe that it does enhance what the law enforcement’s able to do. It actually makes it easier for prosecutors to actually prosecute these types of cases,” Balke says. “It makes it easier on judges, even, when they are able to sign those electronic warrants … it’s a positive all the way around I think for everyone involved except for the offender.”

Miller County in June became the latest county in the state to adopt such a policy. Lamb says 10 to 15 counties in the state now have it in place.

Audit stirs debate over public defender caseload

October 11, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Missouri State Auditor has released an audit of the State Public Defender System that raises questions about how caseloads are calculated. The heads of the associations for the state’s prosecutors and public defenders debate what that means for the idea that there is a caseload crisis.

In a news release, the Auditor says the system is “unable to accurately determine the resources needed to manage caseloads.”

The audit finds the system determines needed attorney hours by converting a national standard from 1973 with the assumption of each attorney working 2,080 hours per year, but calculates the number available attorney hours based on each attorney working an average of 1,536 hours per year.

The Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys says the audit “shatters” the claim that there is a growing crisis of caseload size for the state’s public defenders.

President Eric Zahnd says the audit “reveals that that claim is really simply a myth that has been manufactured by misleading caseload statistics.”

Public Defender System Director Cat Kelly says regardless of how caseloads are calculated, there is no question that there is a caseload issue.

“The question is not, ‘Do we have a problem,’ it’s, ‘Where exactly, precisely should the line be drawn for us to say we can take this many and no more,'” she says “That’s what the debate is over, is where the line is drawn. I would contend that we are so far under that you could draw the line almost anywhere and we would be better off than where we are now.”

Kelly says the audit findings that the caseload protocol need to be improved are not new and says her office is already working to develop a new system not based on national caseload standards. She says an expert that worked with her office, Norman Lefstein, a law professor and dean emeritus at Indiana University, says an upated protocol could reveal a caseload problem that is greater than thought now.

“In his opinion, the protocol that we’re using now … its deficiency is that it has us taking on too many cases, not too few,” Kelly says.

Zahnd says the audit shows public defenders have no basis to defend turning away new clients. Kelly says that isn’t going to happen any time soon, “because the number of cases they have isn’t changing. The caseload is not changing … this is an argument over what is the best measurement of the problem. That doesn’t change the fact that the problem exists.”

Read the audit summary or the full report (pdf).

MAPA president on proposed criminal code overhaul

October 2, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Joint Interim Committee on the Missouri Criminal Code meets again today. The 1,034 page proposal that is its starting point has the backing of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

The Association’s new president, Eric Zahnd, says over time the state’s criminal code naturally develops discrepancies and contradictions that need to be fixed. “Legislators, to their credit, see problems and work to fix those problems, which means that new laws are created every single legislative session. At some point we need to again bring some uniformity to all of those changes that have been made, in this case over more than 30 years, to bring the code back into some sense of uniformity.”

Zahnd says the overhaul will impact other issues, such as prison overcrowding and the caseload for public defenders. “One of the things that we’ve heard, in fact, from the special master who the Missouri Supreme Court appointed to look at the public defender situation, he specifically mentioned the complexity of the criminal code as one of the issues that affects the public defender situation and again, frankly, the entire criminal justice system.”

The hearing today will focus in part on drug law, which the state legislature already made one change to regarding the discrepancy between penalties for powder and crack cocaine. Zahnd says the proposal also, “takes the punishment for some possession offenses and actually decreases the punishment for those but at the same time, for some drug dealing offenses, actually increases punishment for those.”

Another portion of the proposal would also create a new class of felony and a new class of misdemeanor.