Category: criminal justice

Courts, criminal justice

Fact Check: No, It Doesn’t “Take Five Convictions” Before Youth Can Be Detained for Firearms Felonies

By Erica C. Barnett

At a city council briefing this week, interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr said she had recently learned that “it takes multiple convictions of firearms laws before juveniles are held in detention and held accountable.”

Rahr was responding to comments by Councilmember Maritza Rivera about the need to address gun violence in schools.

“What I have heard,” Rahr continued, “is, it actually takes five convictions before they are actually held in detention. That’s astounding to me. That is absolutely frightening to me.”

Prompted by a reader, we decided to fact-check Rahr’s claim. Turns out, juvenile offenders are absolutely held in detention for firearms offenses, even without a conviction.

According to King County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jimmy Hung, who heads the juvenile division of the prosecutor’s office, “whether a child is held in detention pre-adjudication is entirely up to the judges, applying the legal standard for holding youth. In practice, I can assure you that children who are charged with felony possession of firearms are regularly held in juvenile detention, even with no prior history.”

SPD spokesman Randy Huserik confirmed that it “Actually, it requires four convictions for this crime before they can be held in a STATE detention facility.” If that is what Rahr meant, it’s significantly less “frightening” and “astounding” than what she seemed to be implying, which is that young people are being convicted of multiple firearms felonies without ever being “held accountable” by being locked up in jail.

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Under state juvenile sentencing guidelines, firearm possession is a Class C felonies subject to local sanctions, which include confinement in juvenile detention for up to 30 days. (More serious felonies come with harsher sanctions, including automatic confinement in a state detention center and sentences of up to five years). After four convictions, young offenders can be held in state juvenile jails, also known as “juvenile rehabilitation” centers, for up to 36 months. These sentencing guidelines have been in place since 1994, when state legislators stiffened penalties for juvenile offenders.

Bob Kettle, head of the council’s public safety committee, said he would add increasing sanctions for kids convicted of firearm possession to the “add that to the list for [the Office of Intergovernmental Relations] to work with Olympia in the upcoming [legislative] sessions, and the list is growing.”

On Thursday, Axios reported that Rahr walked back another statement she made about state law regarding juvenile witnesses,”clarifying that a 2021 state law doesn’t stop police from questioning juveniles who witness crimes.” Previously, Rahr said that the law—which requires police to provide access to an attorney before interrogating minors in criminal investigations—was impeding an investigation into a deadly shooting last month at Garfield High School.

City Council, criminal justice, Drugs, Police

“A Shameful Legacy of Defund the Police”: Council Blames Protests, COVID for Current Public Safety Issues

Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr says she supports a new kind of secure detention for drug users, while City Attorney Davison blames jail booking restrictions for persistent problems downtown.

By Erica C. Barnett

Members of the Seattle City Council outdid each other calling for more police, more jail, and harsher punishments for people, like those who sell drugs, who “need to be contained,” as Councilmember Bob Kettle put it, during a meeting of the council’s public safety committee Tuesday morning.

Rob Saka, for instance, blamed the city’s current public safety issues on events from four years ago (and the fact that the King County Jail isn’t booking people for most misdemeanors, but more on that in a second). “The public safety challenges that we’re experiencing today are a shameful legacy of the Defund the Police movement,” Saka said. “And that was wrong then and it’s wrong now. And you know, from my perspective, defund is dead. It is not the dominant, controlling policy narrative dominating our policy discussions.”

After describing his “disadvantaged background,” Saka suggested that school closures during the COVID pandemic were also partly to blame. “There’s no way I would be here the dais right now if I had to rely on remote learning, adding that schools needed to be “the last to close and the first to reopen” during COVID.

Maritza Rivera, not to be outdone, said it made her “really angry” that people selling drugs in Magnuson Park, in her district, aren’t being arrested and jailed. “We need to be booking drug dealers, who are causing the most harm, and then diverting the users who actually need services,” she said. (Research indicates that nearly nine in ten people who sell drugs are also drug users.) “There’s a high school, there’s an elementary and a middle school off of Aurora, and these kids are getting solicited” by sex workers, Rivera added. 

Not to be outdone, Council President Sara Nelson said she was “shocked” by the fact that the average daily population at the jail is currently about 80, down from a pre-pandemic average of around 180 to 280. The jail imposed booking restrictions during the pandemic, and has kept those restrictions ever since because there are not enough jail guards to maintain safety standards with a higher inmate population. “I want my money back, basically,” Nelson said.

The purpose of the briefing was for interim Chief Rahr, Davison, and CARE (911) Department Chief Amy Smith—who had just received the committee’s unanimous vote for appointment as permanent chief—to update the council on the “criminal justice ecosystem.”

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Rahr, who has identified hiring more police officers as her primary goal, said the city should help applicants make it past the initial hurdles by adopting a police hiring test that’s more “low-barrier” than the one the city currently uses. Rahr’s comments seemed like an explicit swipe at the Public Safety Civil Service Commission, which has strongly supported keeping the current test, which was designed to help weed out people who are temperamentally unqualified to be officers.

“I know that [the PSCSC] believe  deep in their soul that the test they’re using now is extremely important,” Rahr said, but “my experience in police hiring is the first initial screening test doesn’t need to go that deep, because we’re literally just trying to make sure people have the minimum qualifications, [and then] we have a deep backgrounding process.”

In the competition for police officer applicants, she continued, “the agency that makes that removes the most barriers to get in the door is going to have a larger pool.”

As we’ve reported, the PSCSC supports the current test, developed in collaboration with SPD in response to the 2012 federal consent decree, because it was designed to help weed out candidates who would have problems adhering to Seattle’s constitutional policing requirements. Last week, the PSCSC announced that more people applied and passed the exam in June than in any month since 2019.

Davison said that in her view, the reason crime has gotten so bad downtown is that poliec—who now have the authority, thanks to a law adopted last year, to arrest people for misdemeanor drug use—still can’t book people into the downtown jail for misdemeanors like drug possession, smashing windows, or animal cruelty.

Wait—animal cruelty? Davison said she brought up animals because animal cruelty is often a precursor to domestic violence*, and it’s important to catch it early to prevent young people from becoming abusers in the future. Davison did not explain how being locked up in the King County Jail rehabilitates people who commit misdemeanor animal abuse (harming animals is also a gross misdemeanor and a felony, depending on the extent of the abuse), although she did say she was specifically referring to “early interventions” for young people.

Saka called the booking restrictions “a real head-scratcher,” and said that without the threat of jail, there is “no deterrence whatsoever to any crime—zero.” Criminals, he continued, “can violently smash a business’s window without fear of being booked, to spend a night in jail to think about that. … And animal cruelty—they locked Michael Vick up for years for animal cruelty, and in the city of Seattle, someone can’t spend a night in jail? They can freely abuse an animal. We need to do better.” (Vick was convicted of multiple felonies stemming from his involvement in a dog-fighting ring, and served 21 months in federal prison.)

Rivera said she was “super angry that we’re paying for service that we’re not getting,” referring to county jail beds. “We are not trying to jail folks that have addiction—we need to help these folks—but we need to get the people that are causing the most harm, that are taking advantage of our vulnerable populations, and these people need to be in jail.”

Davison did point out that people who wind up in her “high-utilizers initiative” can be booked into jail under an agreement between Seattle and the county.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed a new contract with SCORE, the regional jail in Des Moines, to incarcerate people accused of misdemeanors in Seattle.

The potential contract is controversial. In May, members of the union that represents staff for the King County Department of Public Defense sent a letter to city officials, including the council, opposing the contract, arguing that the regional jail makes it difficult for people to speak to their attorneys and get to court hearings in Seattle, diminishing the quality of representation they receive. As we’ve reported, six people have died in custody at SCORE in just over a year, including at least one from malnutrition and dehydration; SCORE contracts its medical service out to a private company, Wellpath. King County halted its own pilot program to transfer inmates to SCORE last year.

Rahr said she would also support a “third” kind of secure detention facility for people who commit drug-related crimes, including public drug use, separate from jail or diversion programs like LEAD.

“There are some people who are too medically fragile to be booked in jail, but they’re also too dangerous to be left in an emergency room or be left in a community,” Rahr said after the meeting. “If we had a place to take them that was secure, where they could get the medical intervention they need, particularly for people who are on fentanyl… we could significantly improve the conditions on the street” while also getting people “stabilized and connected with the services they need.”

Asked, after the meeting, about her comment that she wanted the city’s money back, Nelson said, “I do want to make sure that the terms of the contract that we have with the jail are being fulfilled. If we are paying for jail services and we are not getting them, what’s the deal? We need some place to take the people who are perpetrating crimes against my constituents.”

In previous years, the city has clawed back funding that would otherwise have paid for empty jail beds and repurposed it for community-based health and housing programs. During the 2022 budget process, the council voted to place a proviso, or hold, on $3 million the city would have otherwise spent on jail beds it wasn’t using, with the intent of putting that money toward inflation on future jail beds or to other, non-jail purposes. Nelson voted against the amendment.

*And certainly not, as we cynically assumed, because Seattle residents care more about dogs than human beings trapped in the carceral system.

criminal justice, Police

Another Death at SCORE Jail, Officer In Deadly Collision Didn’t Have Valid Washington Driver’s License
Photo by Andrew Engelson

1. Another person held in custody at the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) jail in Des Moines has died,  the King County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed. Lori Ann Renfroe, a 60-year-old woman, was booked into SCORE on May 9, and died in custody there on May 11. The cause of death is undetermined and under investigation by the King County Medical Examiner and King County Prosecutor’s Office. SCORE did not respond to requests for comment.

This is the sixth death in custody at SCORE since March 2023, and the second in two months. In May, PubliCola reported on the death of 21-year-old Makena Buckland of unknown causes. In March, we reported on the death of a woman who died at SCORE last year from malnutrition.  

LaRond Baker, legal director of the ACLU of Washington, said of the most recent death at SCORE, “It is imperative that the recent deaths are thoroughly investigated and that actions are taken to prevent future deaths in custody.”

Medical care at SCORE, which is owned and operated by six South King County cities, is contracted to Wellpath, the nation’s largest prison health care company, which has been the subject of Congressional hearings over concerns about substandard care. Wellpath did not respond to requests for comment.

The Seattle city attorney’s office is reportedly considering contracting with SCORE to house people arrested for low-level misdemeanors. The jail has interlocal agreements with 41 other municipalities across the region, some as far away as Bellingham. In September, King County ended a controversial agreement between the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) and SCORE

According to documents obtained from the state Department of Licensing through a public records request, Seattle police officer Kevin Dave, who struck and killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk while driving 74 miles per hour, did not have a valid Washington State driver’s license at the time of the collision on January 23, 2023.

The documents indicate that Dave surrendered his Washington drivers license on November 18, 2021 because he “transferred out of state,” and took an Arizona driver’s license instead. It’s unclear why Dave, who formerly worked for the Tucson Police Department, and had a troubled history there that resulted in his firing in 2013, would have sought to register as a driver in Arizona while working for SPD.

An official at the Department of Licensing who preferred not to be named confirmed that the documents indicate Dave did not have a valid Washington driver’s license at the time of the collision.

Washington law says that drivers who move from another state must apply for a state license within 30 days. It is unclear if Kevin Dave ever moved back to Arizona during that time but it is clear he was driving with an Arizona license and had been for more than a year when he struck Kandula. Officer Dave was hired by SPD in November 2019.

SPD’s website for officer applicants notes that SPD’s policy is that “An applicant must have a valid Washington State Driver’s License prior to being hired. It is understood that out of state candidates won’t have this at time of application, but they must get one prior to accepting a job. Driving is an essential function of this position with SPD.”

Internal SPD emails previously obtained by PubliCola indicate that supervising officers were concerned about Dave’s past in Tucson, including a potential drunk driving incident that occurred shortly after he was fired. The King County prosecutor declined to file felony charges against Dave for Kandula’s killing, and in May Dave was found delinquent by the Seattle Municipal Court for failing to pay a $5,000 negligent driving ticket issued to him by the City Attorney’s office.

SPD’s communications department did not respond directly to questions about Dave’s license status but said it would forward the information PubliCola obtained “to OPA [the Office of Police Accountability] to include in the investigation.”

—Andy Engelson

criminal justice, Drugs, King County, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

Another Death at SCORE, as Seattle Considers Contract With South King County Jail
Photo by Andrew Engelson

By Andrew Engelson

In March, a 21-year-old woman, Makena Buckland, died while in custody of the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a jail in Des Moines owned and operated by six cities in South King County. This marks the fifth death in custody at the jail in a span of a little over a year—a high number for a jail that houses between 600 and 850 inmates per year.

According to Bellevue Police Department spokesman Seth Tyler, Buckland turned herself in to the jail on February 29 on a warrant issued by BPD. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office says Buckland died in custody on March 4, and that cause of death is still under investigation.

The death was first reported on in an article in March by Sound Publishing, which operates community newspapers in South King County. SCORE did not post a notice of the death on its website, and has also removed previous press releases about the prior four deaths from its website.

Last year, a woman died of malnutrition at SCORE – raising questions about medical care at the jail, which is provided by a national company thatw was the subject of Congressional hearings in December and which been accused of widespread incidents of negligence, insufficient staffing, and substandard care. King County ended a short-lived agreement to house inmates at SCORE last year.

SCORE director Devon Schrum declined to comment on Buckland’s death, saying, “The process of investigating an unexpected fatality and preparing a report of that investigation is governed by state statute and I cannot provide further comment.”

SCORE has still not filed reports on two of the four deaths last year with the Washington State Department of Health, even though all jails in the state are required to file these reports within 120 days of an incident.

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City attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell are reportedly considering a contract with either SCORE or the Issaquah jail for booking low-level offenses, such as violations of a recently passed law making public drug use or possession a misdemeanor. The King County Correctional Center in downtown Seattle, in a policy that began during the pandemic and continues, is not booking people for misdemeanors, except for assaults, violations of protection orders, DUIs, and sex crimes.

In a statement, Davison told PubliCola she wants to explore options for jailing people accused of less serious misdemeanors because King County’s booking restrictions “are having a significant impact on public safety and the operation of the criminal justice system at the Seattle Municipal Court. Residents and business owners are rightfully fed up with seeing no accountability for the same people committing the same crimes day after day. It is time for the City to explore all options to restore jail capacity for misdemeanor crime.”

Harrell spokesman Jamie Housen said the mayor is “continuing to explore strategies that enhance safety” downtown, and that “contracting with new jails is not a required component of these approaches.”

At least two people died while in custody at the Issaquah jail, a 72-bed facility, last year. According to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Kevin Wiley, a 43-year-old man, and 48-year-old David McGrath both died of acute fentanyl intoxication.

Seattle City Councilmember Bob Kettle, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, did not comment specifically on proposals to book misdemeanors at SCORE or the Issaquah jail, but said his committee would ask questions about any contract between the city and other jails. “I’m more than happy to ask those questions because it’s about good governance. It’s about doing the due diligence,” he said. “Those questions should not be just limited to SCORE. We also need to consider: What is the state of the King County Jail?”

SCORE has made something of a cottage industry out of serving as a holding place for people charged with misdemeanors across the Puget Sound area. Though it was created to serve the cities of Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac, and Tukwila it has also signed interlocal agreements with 41 other municipalities across the region, some as far away as Bellingham and San Juan County.

According to San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter, his county sends all of its misdemeanor bookings to SCORE, a four-hour drive and ferry ride away. Peter said the sheriff’s office on San Juan Island only has two small holding cells and doesn’t have staff to hold inmates for more than three days. He said a corrections officer shuttles those in custody between the islands and South King County

“This agreement was put in place before I took over,” said Peter, who was elected in 2022. “We haven’t had any complaints about it,” he said of the arrangement.

SEIU 925, the union that represents public defenders, earlier this month wrote a letter to the mayor’s office and city council outlining its concerns with a potential contract between Seattle and SCORE, concluding, “Our union strongly urges against the City of Seattle contracting with SCORE.” The letter listed numerous problems their attorneys have encountered at the jail including only one small room for lawyers to meet with clients; spotty wifi and lack of cellphone service; access only granted to those with a state bar card, not support staff; and poor transportation services to court appearances, which “has led to missed hearings and instances where defendants did not have suitable interpretation.

“These are only some of the examples in our ongoing labor complaints against King County due to working conditions at SCORE,” the letter said. “Not only do these barriers interfere with the constitutionally protected right to an attorney, they delay moving defendants through the criminal legal system in a timely way, leading to overcrowding and wait lists.”

 

criminal justice, King County, Police

Woman’s Malnutrition Death Raises Questions About Medical Care Standards at South King County Jail
Photo by Andrew Engelson

By Andrew Engelson

A 43-year-old woman, Angela Majoor, died of dehydration, malnutrition, low electrolyte levels and renal failure at the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) jail in Des Moines in May 2023 after spending three days in custody—most of it curled up on the floor of a temporary booking cell.

In a fatality report filed with the State Department of Health (DOH) in February, SCORE said that the Auburn Police Department brought Majoor in on charges of trespass and theft. She had been booked 27 previous times at the jail, which is owned and operated by six cities in South King County. Majoor was in poor health, with the report noting she was “discovered to have sores on her legs” by a nurse at the jail. Majoor resisted a full booking and further exam by staff nurses, the report said, noting that she lay under a blanket on the holding cell floor for two days. 

Heavily redacted incident reports filed by SCORE staff after the death, which PubliCola obtained through a public records request, indicated that Majoor was offered meals and fluids, with one officer noting that “I put the cup to [Majoor’s] mouth as she took multiple sips of Gatorade, notifying her to take small drinks. I told her to drink Gatorade throughout the day.”

Majoor was moved by wheelchair to a medical cell on her third day in custody, and was found dead in that cell on May 19, a little more than 24 hours later. The fatality report filed with DOH said that in addition to dehydration, contributing factors in Majoor’s death included “severe protein calorie malnutrition” and acute methamphetamine intoxication. 

Members of Majoor’s family did not respond to requests for comment.

The report does not indicate that SCORE provided Majoor with any detox care. The report observes that jail guards brought her with meals but concluded, “Meal sacks were not removed at the time a new meal was served. This made it difficult for Corrections Officers to assess how much food was being consumed.”

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Majoor’s death was one of four in custody at SCORE last year, a large number for a jail that houses between 600 and 850 inmates per year. Last year, the ACLU of Washington filed a lawsuit against King County after six people died in one year at the downtown Seattle county jail, which houses twice as many inmates. 

“No one should die in custody due to negligence from the entity responsible for their care,” ACLU of Washington legal director La Rond Baker said. “People do not lose their dignity or humanity when they become incarcerated. Governments running jails have a duty to ensure people involuntarily detained are kept safe and well.” 

The SCORE fatality report also includes a long list of new procedures SCORE says it put in place in response to Majoor’s death, including nurse visits to booking cells every four hours, initiating detox protocols as soon as inmates are booked, and checks by mental health staff on inmates held longer than 3 days who are experiencing detox. The report said Majoor was well-known to staff at SCORE and implied that this may have led to inadequate care: “Over familiarity with the decedent and previous detox experiences were discussed as possible issues.”

At the time of Majoor’s death, medical care at SCORE was provided on a contract basis by Wellpath, the nation’s largest prison health care company, which was the subject of Congressional hearings in December and which been accused of widespread incidents of negligence, insufficient staffing, and substandard care (a Department of Justice investigation in 2021 found Wellpath violated the civil rights of inmates in California).

Nate Bingham, an attorney representing a number of people whose family members died at SCORE, including Damaris Rodriguez, who died naked on the floor of her cell in 2018 and whose family was awarded a $2 million settlement from King County, said that Wellpath reduces costs by minimizing the care it provides to inmates. He pointed to a letter from several US senators in Decemmber raising concerns that Wellpath consistently understaffs facilities. “These issues are entirely consistent with the deficiencies I have seen in Wellpath’s work at SCORE,” Bingham said.

Nicole Jackson, an assistant professor in autopsy pathology at the University of Washington, reviewed the fatality report and redacted incident reports, and based on the limited information they contain, conceded that even with the best of care it would have been difficult to prevent Majoor’s death. “It is highly probable that this individual entered the facility severely dehydrated and/or lost fluids in the toilet (i.e. diarrhea) and did not correct this hydration with the provided food and water.”

SCORE director Devon Schrum said she could not comment further on the unexpected fatality report filed in response to Majoor’s death. Schrum said no staff were disciplined in response to the incident. “During its 13 years, the jail has had 11 unexpected fatalities, each of which were investigated thoroughly, and those investigations now occur through the state mandated process for review of unexpected fatalities,” Schrum said.

Prior to PubliCola’s reporting in September, SCORE had not filed fatality reports with DOH about any of the deaths in custody — which are required by law within 120 days of the incident.

Courts, criminal justice, King County

New Caseload Standards Aim to Improve Ailing Public Defense System, But Could Take a Bite Out of County Budget
Larry Jefferson, director of the state Office of Public Defense, testifies at the state bar association’s board of governors on Friday.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Washington State Bar Association’s governing board adopted new standards for public defenders last week that could dramatically reduce caseloads for defense attorneys and other staff at the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD), which represents indigent people accused of crimes.

The 12-1 vote could also have implications for public defense departments around the state, DPD director Anita Khandelwal says, because the state Supreme Court—which adopts rules that counties across the state must follow—asked the bar association’s Council on Public Defense to come up with these recommendations to respond to the statewide public defender shortage.

“We’ve seen a high rate of attrition and burnout, because the caseloads… are too high,” Khandelwal said. “And what happens is people leave is that the same cases get concentrated onto a smaller number of people. It’s basically like we’re in a death spiral.”

The new rules would have a more immediate impact in King County, according to DPD, because King County operates under its own unique rules: Under the King County Code, public defenders are required to follow the standards the WSBA adopts.

According to DPD director Anita Khandelwal, that means the county must either hire enough attorneys—along with support staff like paralegals, social workers, and investigators—to meet the new standards or invest in alternatives to prosecution and incarceration, reducing caseloads by reducing the number of cases.

“I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.”—King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler

The guidelines, which would also change the requirements for attorneys to qualify for various types of cases (felonies that carry sentences of life without parole, for instance), include a phasing-in period that ends in 2027.

One criticism of the old standards, which have not changed significantly since they were adopted in the 1970s, is that they don’t distinguish between different types of crimes—treating murder, for instance, as if it’s no more complex than a car theft. The new standards no longer dictate a maximum caseload for each broad category of crime; instead, they use a formula that weighs each type of case separately; on average, the new formula would give attorneys about twice as much time to work on each case.

King County Executive Dow Constantine was alarmed enough about the proposed new rules that his general counsel, David Hackett, took the unusual step of sending a letter urging the bar association’s governing board not to adopt the new recommendations. Doing so before the state supreme court can issue its own statewide guidelines, Hackett wrote, would “contradict a standing court rule”—specifically, the current state guidelines for public defense attorneys. Khandelwal says there is no contradiction, because the state standards set a ceiling, not a floor, on cases.

Under the current WSBA standards, each public defense attorney is expected to handle as many as 150 felony cases or as many as 400 misdemeanor cases a year—a workload that would work out to as little as 11 hours per felony, or 4.5 hours per misdemeanor, if attorneys didn’t work overtime. “That’s obviously absurd,” Khandelwal said. “If you were charged with a misdemeanor, you would want an attorney who’s going to spend more than four and a half hours on your case.”

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As it is, high caseloads are leading to an epidemic of burnout among public defenders, and leaving some jurisdictions with so few attorneys that people are languishing in jail for months waiting for a lawyer.

During the WSBA hearing last week, a steady stream of attorneys described the impacts severe overwork has had on their ability to spend time with their families and adequately represent their clients. Larry Jefferson, director of the state’s Office of Public Defense, said his family reacted with shock when he spent a Sunday at home when he was a public defender, because he was rarely able to take even one day off “An normal week for public defenders 60 to 80 hours of work, and [that’s when] they’re not doing a trial. So these standards represent us taking the best step forward to making sure that people get adequate assistance of counsel.”

Kitsap County prosecutor Chad Enright was the lone voice of opposition at Friday’s hearing, calling the standards “frankly comical” in light of the ongoing shortage of public defense attorneys across the state. His “friends in public defense,” Enright said, had two theories. The first was that the new standards are “designed to create chaos” in the hope of creating a new state agency to oversee public defense. The second was that by lowering the number of people public defenders can represent, defense attorneys are hoping to turn the current defense attorney shortage into a crisis, forcing prosecutors to dismiss some charges and effectively “decriminalizing” certain crimes.

Responding to those claims, King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler said, “I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.” Last year, Schueler’s client D’Andre Glaspy was found not guilty of murdering his girlfriend’s two-year-old son after languishing behind bars, unable to pay bail, from 2017 to 2023—a situation Schueler attributed to the crippling caseloads he was working under during those years.

“These caseloads are crippling. It is an impossible task to sit down with a client and tell them, ‘I can’t work on your case effectively and quickly,'” Schueler said.

In his letter, Constantine’s general counsel Hackett warned that adopting the new standards could create “practical problems of adequate legislative funding from the state to fund the new caseloads and the daunting question of whether there are enough defense attorneys to staff the caseloads proposed.” The county is currently facing a $100 million two-year budget shortfall; DPD’s annual budget is currently around $170 million.

Khandelwal argues that the new standards don’t necessarily require the county to increase spending on attorneys.

“It doesn’t have to be a budget question,” she said. “The three-year implementation phase for the standards is also an opportunity to ramp up alternative programming for the next three years, so that we are using our criminal legal system for fewer things.”

Constantine’s office has not yet responded to questions about Hackett’s letter or the impact the new standards will have on the county’s public defense department.