ACLU files emergency motion with Idaho Supreme Court over public defense reform

COEUR d’ALENE — Idaho’s new public defense system is “headed for a disaster” unless the Idaho Supreme Court intervenes, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho said in new court filings. 

In the three months since public defense services in Idaho’s 44 counties were consolidated into the office of the State Public Defender, the system has “rapidly deteriorated,” leading to mass resignations by public defense attorneys, as well as defendants spending weeks or months in jail and appearing in court without speaking to an assigned attorney. 

“This is an obvious and egregious violation of a defendant’s right to legal representation,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a news release Thursday. 

The ACLU called on the Idaho Supreme Court to order the release of indigent defendants who have had “no communication with any attorney within seven days of SPD’s appointment” or “for whom no attorney appeared to assist at any bond argument, preliminary hearing, trial or sentencing,” according to the Dec. 23 filing. 

The new public defense system was created in response to a 2015 class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU over Idaho’s deficiencies in public defense. In the months before the office took effect in October 2024, counties throughout Idaho saw an exodus of public defenders and attorneys who did indigent defense on a contract basis. 

Some attorneys, among them former Kootenai County chief public defender Anne Taylor, expressed concern about political influence on the work of public defenders in a system where the governor chooses the director of public defense. 

Others pointed to an insufficient budget for the state office, as well as inadequate pay for attorneys. Under the state office’s pay structure, about 77% of public defenders throughout the state received raises in the first year, while about 15% had their pay cut, including some attorneys in Kootenai County. Meanwhile, several former conflict attorneys for Kootenai and Shoshone counties chose not to contract with the state “after learning that their compensation would be cut by 30-40%,” according to the ACLU. 

The resulting shortage of public defenders has put a strain on Idaho’s legal system, particularly in North Idaho. 

“Countless indigent defendants have been suffering — appearing at court without counsel, attempting over and over again to get anyone at SPD to tell them who was appointed to defend them and worrying how they could possibly receive effective representation (or representation at all) on cases that have been pending for months,” the ACLU’s motion said in part. 

In the emergency filing, the ACLU described a November hearing called by First District Judge Robert Caldwell to address the case of four indigent defendants in Kootenai County who, until that day, had no specific attorney assigned to represent them. 

Because so many contract attorneys had left the public defense system due to inadequate pay, Jay Logsdon, the lead public defender for the First District, “was being forced to handle all of the Kootenai County contract cases — in addition to every single primary or conflict case in Shoshone County, where there are no other SPD attorneys.” 

Also in Kootenai County, First District Judge James Combo’s chambers created a seven-page list of defendants who had not yet been assigned counsel at the end of September. Defendants on the list still did not have attorneys 10 days later, according to the ACLU. 

“By mid-November, Judge Combo’s courtroom was still seeing issues,” the motion said. “When asked why an in-custody defendant still did not have counsel, SPD’s Kootenai County chief responded, ‘We are just out of attorneys at this point in time.’” 

In one day in Kootenai County, 17 defendants facing misdemeanor charges had no attorney at arraignment. 

“Many defendants would appear, only to find that their counsel wasn’t present, or that they had never been formally assigned one at all,” the motion said. 

In February, a judge in the Fourth Judicial District found that the office of the State Public Defender needed time to develop and said “a new action may be filed challenging that system if there is evidence that ‘widespread, persistent structural deficiencies’ exist that are ‘likely to result in indigent defendants suffering actual or constructive denials of counsel at critical states of criminal proceedings.’” 

The ACLU filed the emergency motion as part of an appeal of last February’s decision. 

“We started this case nearly 10 years ago and despite winning at the Idaho Supreme Court again and again, now we’re back trying to stave off complete disaster,” Morales said in a news release. “It’s unfathomable that people have already been denied their constitutional right for nearly a decade, but the state is again taking us backward.”