ARKANSAS, USA — Dozens of part-time public defenders in Arkansas were at risk of losing their jobs after a meeting on Monday left their funding up in the air, but that issue is now resolved.
At an Arkansas Legislative Council subcommittee meeting on Aug. 19, Executive Director of the Public Defenders Commission Gregg Parrish asked for $1.25 million to finish the remaining 5,250 cases.
In 2022, Arkansas was granted $4.5 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, to hire up to 45 public defenders to tackle the growing backlog of cases since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea was to hire attorneys part time to relieve public defenders of an already full caseload.
With that money, 37 part-time attorneys were brought in to take on about 11,000 cases that accumulated between March 2020 and June 2021. In order to make the money last, their salaries were capped at $60,000.
"We don't have COVID money anymore, it's basically gone. So it's time we get these people through the system. It's not fair to them. It's not fair to the county jail they're sitting in and it's not fair to the people that are waiting for their cases to be heard," Representative Frances Cavenaugh said.
The funding was not immediately granted during Monday's meeting, leaving some worried about what would happen next.
However, on Aug. 23, the council agreed to allocate the funds to Parrish and the commission. The money will be used to pay the salaries of the 32 remaining part-time defenders.
Parrish says public defenders are doing everything they can. But when each public defender has hundreds of cases on their desk, it's a slow process.
"I've got part time public defenders carrying 200 felony cases. We've had people sitting in jail for 18 months the week four trial, their case gets dismissed, and that's something that is beyond our control," Parrish explained.
Parrish says he is grateful for the money but advocates for a comprehensive study to be done nationwide to assess how to fix this systemic issue.
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