Mission:

The Board of Public Defense is a Judicial Branch agency whose mission is to provide excellent criminal and juvenile legal defense services to indigent clients through an independent, responsible and efficient public defender system.

Statewide Outcome(s):

Public Defense, Board of supports the following statewide outcome(s).

People in Minnesota are safe.

Context:

The Board supports the work of public defenders, whose duty is to provide quality representation and zealous advocacy for their clients, and serve as the “quality control” function for the criminal justice system. Ensuring a fair and impartial justice system contributes to the safety and security of the entire state. The Board works with its justice partners to improve and increase the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. This work includes participation in the Chief Justice’s Criminal Justice Task Force, regular meetings with county attorneys, working with District Chief Public Defenders and county attorneys to develop a systematic approach to the use of electronic disclosure in criminal cases. These systemic contributions help maintain a capable and reliable justice system, reducing the possibility of wrongful convictions that would jeopardize the safety and security of people in Minnesota.

The Board of Public Defense provides legal services mandated by the Constitution and statute. The Board’s attorneys and staff serve indigent people in felony, gross misdemeanor, misdemeanor, juvenile delinquency cases, and serve children over ten years of age in Children In Need of Protective Services (CHIPS) cases. It is also mandated to serve the following clients: indigent people in state prisons who appeal their criminal cases to the Minnesota Court of Appeals and Supreme Court; those who pursue post-conviction proceedings in the District Courts throughout the state; and defendants in supervised release/parole revocation proceedings.

The Board has established five goals to aid the agency to carry out its mission:

·         client-centered representation,

·         creative advocacy,

·         continual training for all staff,

·         recruitment and retention of excellent staff, and

·         working as partners in the justice system.

Trial level public defenders provide representation in approximately 150,000 cases per year. It is estimated that public defenders represent about 85% of persons accused of felonies in Minnesota, and about 95 percent of juveniles accused of acts of delinquency, among their other cases. On the appellate level, defenders provide representation in over 2,000 cases per year.

The general fund provides approximately 97 percent of the Board’s budget. The remaining three percent comes from a $75 attorney registration fee that is levied by the Minnesota Supreme Court. This funding is scheduled to end June 30, 2013.

Strategies:

The Board has developed various tools to assist in its mission and goals and to support the idea of effective and efficient service delivery. These include:

• Development/implementation of quality representation guidelines on the trial and appellate levels
• Commitment to vertical representation
• Commitment to team defense
• Commitment to continual training of staff
• A cost effective model of representation that combines full and part time defenders
• Strengthened internal controls
• Development of an internal resource allocation policy to better target attorney resources

Measuring Success:

The criminal justice system is a core function of government driven largely by local decisions. The justice system is often pictured as a funnel. Public defense and in many cases the court itself have no control over who comes in at the top of the funnel. The control is exercised largely on the local level by police and prosecutors. A public defender may not reject a case, but must accept all the clients assigned to her or him (Dziubak v. Mott, 503 N.W.2^nd 771 (Minn.1993.). This means that the Board cannot control its caseload.

The practice of criminal law does not readily lend itself to measuring of “success”. This is especially true in the case of public defense where the client does not have a choice in who will represent him/her. A successful resolution of a case often involves a plea agreement. In these cases a successful outcome is often one where the client has felt that the public defender has had ample time to review their case listen to him/her, understand his/her story, and where the court took the time to listen to them. The Board has developed quality representation guidelines for individual cases. Many of the quality representation guidelines deal with communication between the attorney and the client. The quality guidelines are being incorporated into the individual attorney practice.