Who We Are
I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients.
OPD Staff Attorney Tina Peng talks about the realities and struggles of a continued budget crisis.
The Orleans Public Defenders are facing a million-dollar deficit as a result of statewide budget cuts. For a small office like ours, that’s devastating. To avoid layoffs, the entire staff will see the equivalent of four unpaid weeks per year in furloughs, increased caseloads and a hiring freeze — and the submission to the Louisiana Public Defender Board of a plan to cut services to the people of New Orleans. We are already stretched thin: Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the district attorney’s. The American Bar Association recommends that public defenders not work on more than 150 felony cases a year. In 2014, I handled double that.
Derwyn Bunton: Public Defense Reform Shows Both the Challenge and the Possibility of Post-Katrina New Orleans
In the second season of the HBO series True Detective, Frank Semyon (played by Vince Vaughn), tells a young boy who recently lost his father, "Sometimes a thing happens, splits your life. There's a before and after." For us New Orleanians, that "thing [that] happens" was Hurricane Katrina.
Before Katrina, justice was elusive and unwelcome -- flushed out of the New Orleans criminal justice system long before Hurricane Katrina flooded the courthouse and the jail in 2005. Orleans Parish Prison was packed with more than 6,000 people the day Katrina landed and most had little to no representation in the absence of an organized and institutionally competent public defender office.
Why Public Defense Funding Matters on the Local Level
OPD is facing a $1 million shortfall. The current budget crisis is brought about in part from underfunding and budget cuts by the state and in part from underfunding by the city in the form disparity with other criminal justice agents and the reliance on fines and fees.
But the budget crisis is brought about entirely as a result of an unstable, unreliable and inadequate user-pay regime of funding that makes it impossible to predict from year to year when the next extreme budget shortfall will occur. In the absence of sustainable funding by both the city and the state, we will continue to have a budget crisis every few years when funding by either entity inevitably falls short; the result of which are ultimately unhealthy for New Orleans' criminal justice system.
OPD Implements Restriction of Services as Funding Drops
New Orleans – Constitutionally-required legal representation is once again in jeopardy in New Orleans due to decreased revenue and budget shortfalls for the Orleans Public Defenders (OPD). Last week, Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton alerted criminal justice stakeholders that OPD was again short of necessary funding due to the continued decline of revenue both locally and at the state level.
OPD Partners with Tulane Medical School for Public Health Rotation
Fourth year Tulane medical student Max Shapiro is spending a month of his medical training this summer to immerse himself in the criminal justice system, the clients represented by the Orleans Public Defenders and the vast challenges defendants face at Tulane and Broad.
What may seem like an unusual partnership is an innovative initiative by Tulane School of Medicine to connect students to the New Orleans community, expose them to the challenges that underserved populations are facing today, and provide support to community-based agencies.
OPD Named MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge Partner in New Orleans
New Orleans, LA – Last week the MacArthur Foundation named New Orleans one of its 19 Safety and Justice Challenge sites and awarded the city a grant to reduce local jail population. Led by the Mayor’s office, the Orleans Public Defenders (OPD) will be a key partner in the project, along with the New Orleans City Council, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Judiciary, the New Orleans Police Department, the District Attorney, Baptist Community Ministries, and the Louisiana Institute for Public Health and Justice.
