Area 5 Pub. Defender Office v. Kellogg

610 S.W.3d 383

In re: AREA 5 PUBLIC DEFENDER OFFICE, Appellant,

v.The Honorable Daniel F. KELLOGG, Presiding Judge of the Circuit Court of Buchanan County, Missouri, Respondent.

WD 83535

Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District.

OPINION FILED: October 6, 2020

J. Gregory Mermelstein, Deputy Director/General Counsel, Missouri State Public Defender's Office, Columbia, MO, Attorney for Appellant.

Ronald R. Holliday, Buchanan County Prosecutor, St. Joseph, MO, Attorney for Respondent.

Before Division One: Mark D. Pfeiffer, Presiding Judge, and Edward R. Ardini, Jr., and Thomas N. Chapman, Judges

Mark D. Pfeiffer, Presiding Judge

The Area 5 Public Defender Office ("PD Office"), located in St. Joseph, Missouri, appeals from the judgment entered by the Honorable Daniel F. Kellogg, presiding judge of the Circuit Court of Buchanan County, Missouri ("circuit court"), denying the PD Office's request for relief for individual attorneys in the office from excessive caseloads relating to criminal nonsupport cases, after a section 600.063¹ caseload conference on the record in response to the PD Office's motion requesting such a conference to discuss caseload issues.

This case presents a statutory question of first impression: Whether section 600.063.1 prohibits a district defender² from discussing and seeking relief from excessive caseloads for all the individual attorneys in a public defender office and prohibits the circuit court from discussing and granting relief to all the individual attorneys.

Factual and Procedural History

On November 18, 2019, the District Defender managing the PD Office filed a motion pursuant to section 600.063 requesting a conference to discuss caseload issues. The District Defender alleged that:

Due to excessive caseloads, the individual attorneys of the Area 5 Public Defender Office are violating or at risk of violating Missouri Supreme Court Rules 4-1.1 (competence), 4-1.3 (diligence), 4-1.4 (communication), and 4-1.7 (conflict of interest), as well as the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, if they continue to accept additional cases.

She further alleged that although section 600.063 precludes discussion of the "entire office," "a conference is necessary ... because none of the available attorneys in her office are able to accept additional cases at this time," and she "would not need to have a conference with the Court if only some individual attorneys in her office were unable to accept additional cases; she could simply reassign cases within the office to other attorneys who were able to accept the cases."

The circuit court held a caseload conference on the record on January 7, 2020, at which appearances were entered by the District Defender of PD Office, the Public Defender Division Director,³ and the Youth Alliance P.O.W.E.R. Project Manager.⁴

The District Defender stated that due to the excessive caseloads of the individual attorneys in her office, they could not meet with clients in a timely fashion within seven days, visit clients in jail, watch all the hours of dash-cam video before pleading or trial, obtain and review mental health records, obtain and review school records and criminal history, read the sentencing assessment reports, and adequately prepare before appearing at sentencing.

The District Defender submitted the following exhibits to the circuit court for consideration: 1 Individual Attorneys Caseload; 2 RubinBrown Report (Missouri Project);⁵ 3 Chief Disciplinary Counsel's brief in public defender attorney disciplinary case; 4 Supreme Court Order of Discipline; 5 Transcript from Supreme Court public defender attorney discipline case; 6 Waters case; 7 Pie Chart Since Waitlists Implemented; 8 Pie Chart Prior to Waitlists Implemented; 9 Nonsupport Court Cases; 10 Pending Waitlist; 11 Accepted Waitlist Cases; 12 Waitlist Cases Removed from Waitlist Without Public Defender Representation as of January 2, 2020; 13 Pending Waitlist Average; 14 Missouri State Public Defender Cumulative Caseload Metrics; 15 ABA Opinion 06-411 regarding Ethical Obligations of Lawyers Who Represent Indigent Criminal Defendants When Excessive Caseloads Interfere With Competent and Diligent Representation; 16 ABA Eight Guidelines of Public Defense Related to Excessive Workloads; and, 17 Proposed Order.

Exhibit 1 was the twelve-month assigned caseload of each of the seven attorneys in the PD Office from December 16, 2018, to December 16, 2019, with five of the seven attorneys having been assigned more than 200 new cases. One attorney had been assigned fewer cases (126) only because she transferred to the PD Office in September 2019; and the District Defender, who also had supervisory duties, was assigned 105 new cases. There was evidence that all of the individual attorneys, including the District Defender, exceeded the Public Defender's maximum caseload standard. The District Defender stated that the PD Office "just need[ed] to slow down the influx [of criminal nonsupport cases] so we can manage our caseload better. And that led us to starting an informal waitlist." The informal waitlist had 22 noncustodial defendants on it, with an average wait time of 45 days.

The solution proposed by the District Defender was for the circuit court to authorize the PD Office to implement a waitlist of noncustodial indigent defendants charged with criminal nonsupport and/or criminal nonsupport violations, with public defenders accepting defendants from the waitlist as clients when the individual attorneys’ workloads permitted, with in-custody defendants prioritized.

The presiding judge asked what had changed. The District Defender stated that since 2014, the PD Office had been reduced from eight to seven attorneys. Also a public defender attorney had been disciplined by the Missouri Supreme Court for not meeting his ethical obligations, which was a "game changer" according to the Division Director because now "it's clear that caseload is not a defense, it's a violation of the ethical rule.... So now we have to come to the Court and let you know there's just too many cases."

The presiding judge expressed concern that the statute "is supposed to be for individual attorneys. So I don't know that you can ask for the whole office, at least not according to the statute. What's your response on that?" The Division Director responded that the District Defender "couldn't come here and simply say, Judge, the entire office wants to turn down cases because when you look at the office capacity as a whole it's over 100 percent. But I do have seven individual attorneys who do need, you know, to turn down cases because each individual attorney ... is overloaded. And when it says ‘but not the entire office,’ I don't think the statute means, well, you can't include every individual attorney. It means you can't include the office as the office." The District Defender agreed, stating: "[W]hat I think the statute means is that you can't arbitrarily argue the office can't take any more cases without showing that each attorney is overloaded. And we've shown that each attorney is overloaded in Exhibit 1."

On January 21, 2020, the circuit court issued a judgment denying relief. The circuit court made no findings of fact; instead, it concluded as a matter of law that "contrary to the provisions of [section 600.063], Movant [PD Office] seeks relief for all attorneys in the office. This is clearly precluded by the mandate of the statute, which limits the discussion to ‘any individual public defender or defenders, but not the entire office. As this Motion seeks relief which is barred by the statute, the Court must deny the Motion." The PD Office timely appealed.

Standard of Review⁶

"Statutory interpretation is a question of law and is subject to de novo review." Henry v. Piatchek , 578 S.W.3d 374, 378 (Mo. banc 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). "This Court's primary rule of statutory interpretation is to give effect to legislative intent as reflected in the plain language of the statute at issue."

Karney v. Dep't of Labor & Indus. Rels. , 599 S.W.3d 157, 162 (Mo. banc 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly:

We will look beyond the plain meaning of the statute only when the language is ambiguous or would lead to an absurd or illogical result.

A statute is ambiguous when its plain language does not answer the current dispute as to its meaning. Ambiguities in statutes are resolved by determining the intent of the legislature and by giving effect to its intent if possible. When determining the legislative intent of a statute, no portion of the statute is read in isolation, but rather the portions are read in context to harmonize all of the statute's provisions. Rules of statutory construction are used to resolve any ambiguities if the legislative intent is undeterminable from the plain meaning of the statutory language.

Truman Med. Ctr., Inc. v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co. , 597 S.W.3d 362, 367 (Mo. App. W.D. 2020) (quoting Truman Med. Ctr., Inc. v. Am. Standard Ins. Co. , 508 S.W.3d 122, 124-25 (Mo. App. W.D. 2017) ).

Analysis

In 2008, pursuant to its rulemaking authority under section 600.017(10), the Missouri Public Defender Commission promulgated an administrative rule, 18 CSR 10-4.010, adopting a "caseload protocol" that permitted a district defender office to decline additional appointments:

in response to mounting concern that, due to the growth in the number and complexity of cases requiring public defender services without a corresponding increase in the number of public defenders, some public defenders’ caseloads had increased to a level that interfered with their ability to fulfill their constitutional, statutory and ethical obligations to represent their clients effectively and competently.

State ex rel. Mo. Pub. Def. Comm'n v. Waters , 370 S.W.3d 592, 599 (Mo. banc 2012). As an integral part of the rule, the Commission was required to "maintain a caseload standards protocol identifying the maximum caseload ...