The state's Public Defender Agency will stop accepting new clients facing serious felony charges in the Bethel and Nome Superior Courts because of a shortage of qualified attorneys.
The state lawyers who represent Alaskans who can’t afford to pay for their own attorneys will soon stop accepting new clients who face serious felony charges filed in the Nome and Bethel Superior Courts because of an ongoing shortage of qualified attorneys.
A spokesperson for the Alaska Court System declined to respond to questions about the options that low-income individuals facing felony charges in Bethel and Nome will have without the avenue of representation from the Public Defender Agency. “With a few additional attorneys with the necessary training and experience to handle unclassified and A felonies, the situation could improve quickly. Otherwise, the agency needs time for its existing qualified attorneys to resolve many of their pending cases before they can ethically accept new cases or for newer attorneys to gain the necessary experience to be able to handle these case types,” Cherot said.
While the Public Defender Agency attempts to hire attorneys who live and work in the communities they represent, they have sometimes relied on attorneys who do not reside in rural Alaska to represent clients who live there, because of challenges in recruiting attorneys to those regions. But experienced public defenders across the state are at capacity and cannot fill the gaps left in Bethel and Nome, according to the letters.
The Office of Public Advocacy, which falls under the state Department of Administration, is called upon to represent low-income clients — who cannot afford to pay for legal representation — when public defenders face a. But James Stinson, director of the Office of Public Advocacy, indicated the office would resist if ordered by the court system to share the burden of court cases typically handled by the Public Defender Agency.
“The solution cannot be to cause small OPA sections to implode. If the attorneys in those offices become overwhelmed and quit, then there will be even more clients who are not represented,” he added.
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