With high caseloads, county public defenders limit new cases
FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP) – Assistant public defenders in Williamson County faced with increasing caseloads have started taking on fewer new cases.
The Tennessean reports (http://tnne.ws/1pWXaMP ) 21st District Public Defender Vanessa Bryan says that her two assistant public defenders working criminal cases in circuit court are handling more cases than are recommended, and therefore, they’ve stopped taking some new cases for a while.
New cases involving poor defendants are now being assigned to private lawyers.
Prosecutor Kim Helper says she’ll file an objection next week, asking Bryan to provide more evidence of the increasing caseloads.
Bryan declined to give caseload numbers to the newspaper, but says they’re double what they were three months ago.
Deputy Clerk Roberta Faulkner says the two public defenders and their office have about 210 total cases assigned to them.
