Yankton Press & Dakotan. March 25, 2024.
Editorial: SD Public Defender Bill Is A Step Forward
Better late than never, South Dakota stepped into a new legal era last week when Gov. Kristi Noem signed House Bill 1057, which establishes a state public defender office, into law.
This legislation will help counties deal with providing legal representation for certain individuals in the court system.
Prior to this, counties were responsible for picking up the entire cost of such legal representation.
Under HB1057, the new state office will take over certain types of indigent cases that the counties would otherwise have to cover, South Dakota Searchlight reported. These will include criminal appeals, habeas corpus appeals and child abuse and neglect appeals.
“A strong criminal justice system supports our American way of life,” the governor said in a press release. “It upholds the rights of our people. That includes the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel.”
It’s a welcome change for South Dakota, particularly for the counties that are dealing with that legal burden. This was the last state in the union that did not have a public defender office to handle such cases.
HB1057 came about from recommendations made by a task force set up last summer to study the costs of public defenders in the state. It was created because some counties were facing dire financial issues dealing with these cases.
“We don’t have two to three years to get this fixed,” Hughes County Commissioner Randy Brown, a member of the task force, said last July. “We’re going to need some sort of financial assistance starting next year.”
Added Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, “It would be nice to see some sort of funding component and relief to the counties that are really squeezed by this in the initial court-appointed attorney appointments.”
The new office is forecast to cost the state $1.4 million annually but save the counties $2.1 million a year. According to Searchlight, lawmakers have added a one-time influx of $3 million to help counties with current indigent cases.
This new office should provide a real service to counties facing strained budgets and states attorneys with limited staffs trying to deal with growing workloads.
However, the office is not the end of the issue. In other states, public defenders often report being underpaid and overworked for their services — an indication that this measure in South Dakota may merely transfer some of those headaches from one entity to another. We’ll see how it transpires.
But this new office is a start and quite definitely a step in a better direction for all involved.
END