More than 100 criminal defendants in Washington County do not have court-appointed attorneys assigned to their case — further evidence of the impact of a mounting public defender crisis in Oregon.
To address this backlog, the Washington County Circuit Court is rolling out its third specialty court docket system in three years.
Thanks to a contract with a local consortium of defense attorneys, the so-called Wingspan 3 court docket aims to address at least half of these cases.
The specialty court is named after the Wingspan Event Center, where Washington County stood up its first specialty court in 2020 to address the backlog of cases brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on in-person court hearings.
While the courts’ newest specialty court, as well as the second one conducted in 2021, has since been moved to the courthouse in Hillsboro, the Wingspan moniker stuck after that first experiment.
Wingspan 3 is geared only to handle criminal defendants who are not being held in custody and who do not have an attorney assigned to their case. Defendants who are being held in jail are not eligible.
The Washington County District Attorney’s Office will also have some discretion in which cases will appear on the specialty docket.
Trial court administrator Richard Moellmer said there are approximately 100 people in Washington County who meet these criteria. The goal of the special docket is to address at least half of them.
“It took months, and there was some bureaucracy involved, but the Office of Public Defense Services (OPDS) contracted with (the Oregon Defense Attorney Consortium) … a group of local law firms that do defense work,” Moellmer said. “They will assign experienced lawyers because that’s how these kinds of special dockets work best.”
The catch is that the attorneys are not agreeing to fully take on the case, but rather to provide temporary representation called “advice counsel.” If they cannot resolve the case during the Wingspan 3 docket, the defendant will need a full-time attorney assigned to their case to see it through.
“These lawyers don’t have the capacity to take on 100 new clients, but some of them have the ability to do a limited number of hours of work on a case … so they’ve agreed to take on the case on a limited basis to try and resolve it,” said Robert Harris, director of the consortium.
He estimated that the contract with OPDS, one of the main contractors for court-appointed attorneys in Oregon, is around $55,000. He called this a pretty good value for how many cases Wingspan 3 hopes to resolve.
“It would probably cost $300,000 to assign a lawyer to all these cases, and that’s if we have the lawyers — which we don’t,” Harris said.
The paucity of public defenders in Oregon is why so many of these unrepresented defendants have piled up. Wingspan 3 is just for defendants who are not being held in custody pending trial, but Washington County has 45 defendants in jail who are also unrepresented.
There are currently about 80 unrepresented defendants who are in jail, awaiting trial, across the entire state of Oregon. That means more than half of them are in Washington County.
These inmates are left in legal limbo, where they cannot be arraigned or tried on the charges they were arrested for. Instead, they are scheduled for status hearings, told whether an attorney has been found for their case, and then forced to wait for the next hearing to hopefully see progress.
Public defenders say this leads to a constitutional crisis, since defendants are presumed innocent and guaranteed the right to an attorney by the U.S. and Oregon constitutions.
“Crisis is the right word for it,” said Mary Bruington, director of Metropolitan Public Defender’s office in Washington County. “Obviously, appearing in court at all without an attorney is problematic … because not only are they advising you, but they are protecting your rights.”
That’s why Harris said that “while the problem shouldn’t exist in the first place,” addressing any of the backlog, even if just for those who aren’t being held in jail, will free up more court and attorney resources to address other cases.
Wingspan 3 gives prosecutors, public defenders and defendants a chance to expedite cases and try to resolve them quickly.
“I would say that Wingspan 3 will give the unrepresented clients an opportunity, but not an obligation, to resolve their case in a way that could be a substantially better outcome than if the case got delayed,” Harris said. “However, that will only occur if the defense lawyers are experienced and fully explain their options to their clients.”
The first Wingspan court will be held on Feb. 13, processing as many qualified cases as possible for the next five weeks.