成人X站

The progressive Washington State Supreme Court (WASC) may green-light the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) new public defense standards. If approved, thousands of violent and non-violent criminals will go without any charges, let alone punishment. And it appears that releasing criminals from punishment is the very point from some public defenders.

If this sounds dramatic, it’s because it聽颈蝉听that dramatic. It would lower the number of cases a public defender can take, limits the ability of private attorneys to take on cases for counties and coincides with a shortage of attorneys across the state.

It’s why county prosecutors and local judges are sounding the alarms.

“It will absolutely break the system,” Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Eisinger explained on “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

He argued this may become a “backdoor way of decriminalizing all kinds of (criminal) behavior.”

More from Jason Rantz: After crime crisis cost him his insurance, business owner vows to stop paying taxes in protest

What’s in the proposal to change the public defender standards?

Under the current guidelines, a public defense attorney can take up to 150 felony and 300 misdemeanor cases per year. However, after a report by the RAND Justice Policy Program, the National Center for State Courts that public defense workload standards are outdated and should be updated, WASC asked WSBA to come up with a proposal.

Under the , public defenders would only handle a maximum of 47 felony or 120 misdemeanor cases per year. But they may get away with handling far fewer.

Under the plan, which the WASC is considering, the cases are assigned a number of “credits” based on the severity of the crime. While a low-level felony case is assigned one credit, a high-level felony like murder would use up to seven credits. If the plan is adopted as-is, it’s possible for a single public defender to handle only seven high-level felony cases in a year.

When it comes to misdemeanors, cases would earn either one or one and a half credits. Eisinger said the caseload maximum is far too low, leaving him worried that “it’s going to turn it into a halftime job and they’re going to be paid as a full-time attorney.”

So, what is the crisis exactly?

Eisinger noted that we have a statewide shortage of attorneys. It’s especially bad in South Central Washington, including Benton, Yakima and Franklin counties. This new proposal would make the attorney shortage crisis even more consequential.

If this plan is implemented, the Radical Left will have dismantled the criminal justice system as promised, resulting in prosecutors being unable to charge because they won’t have any public defense attorneys to assign to cases.

“It puts us in a really hard spot because as the elected prosecutor, the last thing that I want to do is make my filing decisions based on defense attorney availability issues,” Eisinger said. “My charge from the county, from the citizens of my county, is protect the public, vindicate the rights of victims, and protect, protect society from falling apart.”

Eisinger pointed to instances from June where high-profile suspects were released by a judge because they couldn’t find an attorney to represent them.

We’re already releasing criminals due to attorney shortage

A suspect accused of breaking into a motorcycle dealership had his charges dropped because of the attorney shortage. The next day, he allegedly robbed a Chase bank in Kennewick.

Another suspect accused of luring a woman to his home with the promise of a free tattoo before sexually assaulting her was released from jail after waiting five weeks for an attorney, according to the . He skipped his next court hearing and was nowhere to be found.

These instances would be a common occurrence under the new proposal.

“The situation that we’re currently in just does not take the reality of the shortage of attorneys generally within the state into consideration,” he said. “There just aren’t enough attorneys within our area, within our community, when this new standard goes into effect to actually hire the number of people that it will take to be defense attorneys for us to do our job.”

More from Jason Rantz:听Seattle restaurant owner 鈥榣ost all faith鈥� in city after 23rd break-in

‘A back doorway of decriminalizing’ crime

After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, activists sought to “dismantle systems of oppression,” which included the courts.

They argued that it is steeped in “white supremacy” and that the courts “disproportionately target people of color.” They vowed to rebuild the system through a social justice and politically progressive lens.

“I’m concerned that the end result of this (proposal) might be really kind of a backdoor way of decriminalizing all kinds of behavior,” Eisinger warned.

He’s right to be concerned.

In a letter to King County council members and other local leaders, King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion shared her “serious concerns” over the WSBA proposal. She warned that it could lead to “catastrophic fiscal and practice impacts” on the criminal justice system.

King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) Director Anita Khandelwal addressed Manion’s concerns by telling her to stop prosecuting so many cases and pay criminals to stop breaking the law.

Stop prosecuting property crimes? Pay criminals?

Khandelwal has long lobbied for a soft-on-crime approach, previously using COVID-19 as a pretext to urge the release of dangerous criminals from jail, including suspects accused of failing to register as a sex offender, first- and second-degree motor vehicle theft, residential burglary and even those with fugitive warrants.

With that context, her response to Manion can be expected.

“Prosecutors could exercise their discretion to prosecute charges that are likely to protect public safety,” Khandelwal wrote in a letter obtained by “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. “For instance, there is no evidence to suggest that arrest and prosecution for property crimes deters individuals from engaging in crimes,”

Khandelwal recommended the county implement “programs involving cash transfers” because they “have been shown to decrease crime 鈥� particularly property crimes.”

“Given that most cases filed by the PAO involve non-violent crime, the county could simply choose to invest in universal basic income as a crime prevention strategy,” she wrote. “In addition to being more effective, such an approach would also avoid the racial disproportionality of the criminal legal system.”

‘We’re literally at a crossroads with our public safety system’

Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Jason Cummings has been warning local leaders about what the WSBA program means to public safety. When he read Khandelwal’s letter, he said he wanted to believe that the intent of the proposal wasn’t meant to dismantle the criminal justice system, but “the net effect is a substantial impact.”

“We’re literally at a crossroads with our public safety system in the state of Washington,” Cummings told “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

He said he was frustrated by Khandelwal’s letter. Intervening in some of the lower-level felony crimes is often an opportunity to stop a criminal from continuing down the wrong path.

“It’s frustrating to me to say that the answer is, ‘Well then just don’t charge people with lower-level felony offenses, and then you won’t have as many cases to handle,'” Cummings explained. “Oftentimes, that’s the time where we could actually intervene in somebody’s life and try to at least change the course of where they’re going, as opposed to waiting for them to commit a serious, violent offense.”

What about the victims?

As Khandelwal and other like-minded public defenders send signals that the proposal is intended to stop the prosecution of certain crimes, Prosecuting Attorney Eisinger wonders why the victims have been forgotten.

“Nobody is talking about the impact of victims,” he explained. “Nobody’s talking about the impact that’s going to this entire community is going to face from not charging many of our serious felony offenses. Honestly, if you have your vehicle stolen out of your driveway, I realize it’s a property crime, but you’re going to feel a sense of violation. Right? That this was this was in my front driveway. How how could that happen?”

He said these crimes create a feeling of vulnerability for the victims. Don’t they deserve peace of mind that the person who took a feeling of security from them will pay a legal price?

“I say that realizing like everybody has their story in terms of how they get into trouble,” he added. “I’ve walked down that road as a defense attorney. But I also think that and I think there is a defense attorney conversation that can happen there behind closed doors. The job of the system is to enforce the law to enforce the rule of law, and to establish real consequences where there’s where there’s criminal actions. And with this new change, I’m concerned is going to significantly limit our ability to enforce the law.”

What can be done about the shortage of public defenders?

There is undoubtedly a defense attorney shortage in Washington, especially in central and eastern Washington. Taking note of cases in the Tri-Cities resulting in releasing dangerous suspects, King County Superior Court judge Sean O’Donnell said online that he considers the defense attorney shortages “to now be a three-alarm fire in Washington state.”

Federal Way Municipal Court Dave Larson, also a candidate for Washington State Supreme Court, told “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH that simply paying public defenders more could help would-be attorneys consider the job over high-salaried private practice positions.

“Public Defenders are paid much less than prosecutors, they don’t get as much in the way of benefits, they don’t get pensions,” Judge Larson noted.

Prosecuting Attorney Cummings echoes concerns over pay, which is why in Snohomish County prosecutors and defense attorneys earn the same pay. It’s helped his county avoid the shortage issue.

‘It will absolutely break the system’

As the Supreme Court weighs the WASB proposal, Washingtonians are encouraged to contact the court with their opinions. But it seems likely that the WASC will do something given they’re the ones that initiated the review of public defender standards.

While Eisinger acknowledges the shortage of attorneys may be burdensome to public defenders, putting more cases on their plates, he said the WASC should “take into account the fact that this is going to be a transition that’s going to take a whole lot longer than three years, or it will absolutely break the system.”

“I think that at a minimum, this is being done with a reckless disregard of what the outcome will be, which is, frankly, the crash of the criminal justice system if this goes forward,” he warned.

To weigh in on this, the court is taking public comment at supreme@courts.wa.gov or by U.S. Mail at P.O. Box 40929, Olympia, WA 98504-0929.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3-7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the聽podcast here. Follow Jason on聽,听听补苍诲听.