If New Orleans Can't Supply Public Defenders, Should Suspects Be Freed?

Public defenders in New Orleans stopped taking complex felony cases in January due to depleted resources—the result of Louisiana’s poor funding formula for services to aid those who can’t afford lawyers. Louisiana is bound by both its state constitution and the U.S. constitution to provide these services no matter what. That obligation has been compromised, however. Since the public defenders stopped taking these cases, judges have been assigning them out to private attorneys. Now, the private lawyers are looking to pull out of these cases, as well.

What should happen with the people who’ve been sitting in jail for months— some of them years— because there are no lawyers available to them? They should be released, says Pamela Metzger, a Tulane Law School professor and one of the private attorneys assigned by a New Orleans judge to represent indigent clients. On March 29, she filed a motion with the New Orleans criminal district court asking that seven people currently in custody awaiting trial be set free because appropriate legal representation cannot be provided to them by the city.