Kane County public defender: We can't always provide rigorous defense

Kane County residents who can't afford an attorney might still not receive the rigorous criminal defense they deserve.

The county's top public defense attorney told officials Thursday her office can't afford to hire the lawyers it needs nor examine evidence to the depth defendants deserve.

"We're closing cases at a very, very fast rate," Kane County Public Defender Kelli Childress said. "I'm proud of that. It's efficient for the court system. But if I'm defending 7,500 cases in a year, how many of those cases am I thoroughly investigating?"

Childress said too many criminal cases move through the system without independent evidence analysis and interpretation on behalf of defendants her office is charged with assisting.

"We just don't have a budget to do that," she told the county board's judicial and public safety committee. "We try to pick and choose which ones we prioritize. We run a lot of risk ignoring evidence we should be looking at because we can't afford to look at it or we don't have time to look at it.

"If you have a staff of two investigators, you're probably not doing enough investigation. We really need to be scrutinizing the evidence better."

The comments came as part of a long-term push to add two attorneys to her office. Those two attorneys would add about $72,000 in new, annual salary and benefit costs to the county payroll.

Childress presented caseload statistics showing Kane County's public defenders have a much higher burden, per attorney, than those of any comparable county for just about any type of case her attorneys are assigned.

She told board members her staffing is based on 40-year-old standards. Forty years ago, Illinois only had about 25 percent of the criminal laws that now exist. Lawyers also didn't have to deal with DNA evidence, cellphone tracking technology and a variety of other forensic evidence improvements, she said.

The committee did not take a vote on Childress' request. That vote will await further explanation by Childress in coming months about the lack of true justice that can result from public defense attorneys handling too many cases at once.

The discussion will fold into the county's 2017 budget process.