Allegheny County’s public defenders have untenable workloads and insufficient resources, leaving their clients at a disadvantage, according to a recently released audit from the county controller.
The Office of the Public Defender (OPD) also fails to meet American Bar Association rules for independence and oversight and needs to strengthen internal processes, auditors wrote.
The Constitution guarantees legal assistance for people who cannot afford their own attorney. Most criminal defendants who can’t afford legal defense (sometimes known as indigent defendants) receive representation from a county public defender.
But during the audit period of January 2022 to December 2023, nearly 86% of the county’s public defenders had caseloads exceeding national standards. An analysis of one attorney’s caseload found that they would need to work more than three times their available hours to meet the national standard for the amount of time an attorney should spend on each case.
Auditors noted that the findings don’t necessarily mean defendants were receiving ineffective assistance. But the massive caseloads are unsustainable, said County Controller Corey O’Connor.
Indigent defendants should “get representation where somebody is not working so many hours on overtime, where they're not working on weekends, sometimes working on holidays,” he said, adding that the burden is unfair for the lawyers and clients alike.
His office suggested the OPD fill vacant attorney positions, implement a modernized case management system to utilize resources more efficiently, and efficiently, and require additional documentation to ensure that defendants are eligible for free representation
Traditionally, Pennsylvania counties have had to pay for the cost of providing legal defense for the indigent, though last year the state contributed funding for public defense for the first time. But despite that, and despite a 10 percent increase in the office’s budget in Allegheny County’s spending plan this year, the District Attorney’s budget is nearly twice the size.
Attorneys, clients, and advocates have been ringing the alarm bell about the disparity for years. A 2024 report from the Allegheny Lawyers Initiative for Justice (ALIJ) called for a “fundamental overhaul” of the county’s public defender system.
ALIJ president Rob Perkins said the new findings were no surprise. But he said the audit was a step in the right direction: It was the first to examine the county’s indigent defense system.
“The mere fact that they chose to focus their resources and time on this issue highlights its importance,” said Perkins, a former public defender and attorney who takes some court-appointed work. As the system currently works, he said, it’s “impossible” for public defenders to provide each client with adequate representation.
In a written response to the audit, chief public defender Lena Bryan-Henderson said that though the audit identified the office’s “critical need” for a more reliable case-management system that can track caseloads, the controller’s office overestimated the number of vacant positions at the OPD.
The office uses a “seasonal recruitment model” to train law students during their final year of school. After they pass the Bar Exam, they move into available attorney positions.
“This ensures our vacancies stay low,” she wrote.
Bryan-Henderson agreed that the OPD needs to improve attorney caseload management and analysis, describing the current software as “dated, inadequate, and often [the source of] more work rather than less.”
The audit also found that the court system for assigning attorneys does not comply with the first rule of the American Bar Association’s Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System: The selection, funding, and payment of defense counsel should be independent.
If a conflict of interest precludes public defenders from representing a defendant, the court appoints a private attorney or an attorney from the Office of Conflict Counsel. In Allegheny County, judges assign the very attorneys that will appear in front of them, which critics argue can create conflicts of interest.
Bryan-Henderson noted that her office has no involvement in the court-appointed attorney selection process but said, “We support a process to appoint court-appointed attorneys in alignment with American Bar Association Principles.”
She also pushed back on the controller’s income verification recommendation. She said there is no evidence that requesting additional documents from defendants, like pay stubs or tax returns, would reduce caseloads, bring down wait times, or help attorneys prepare for a case.
Perkins found other recommendations in the report to be less promising.
One directs officials to lobby Harrisburg for additional funding for public defenders. But Perkins said that’s “not a realistic solution.”
Pennsylvania is “one of the worst states in the country forever when it comes to [funding] public defense,” he said. In 2024, the state allotted $7.5 million for public defenders in all 67 counties. The ACLU is suing Pennsylvania for inadequately funding the public defense system.
Perkins argued that funding the public defender’s office would save the county money in the long run.
The justice system is “by design an adversarial system,” he said. “So if the police and the prosecutors have a billion dollars [budget] and the public defender's office has one dollar [budget], it's not a fair fight.”
Read the full report here.
