South Dakota’s first state public defender and his staff of four have taken on 43 cases since taking their first this winter.
Lawmakers created and funded the Office of Indigent Legal Services in 2024 to address the ballooning cost of lawyers for people who have a constitutional right to one but can’t afford it.
The state convened a task force to address that issue in 2023, spurred in part by the doubling of county-paid public defense bills in the space of 10 years.
As of two years ago, South Dakota was one of only two states in the U.S. to collar counties with the full cost of indigent defense. A state-level office, the task force concluded, could begin to relieve some of that pressure.
The resulting Office of Indigent Legal Services doesn’t represent clients at trial — counties still pay area lawyers for that — but instead handles appeals of felony convictions and rulings against parents and guardians in abuse and neglect cases.
Lawmakers put $1.4 million in the office’s budget for the current fiscal year, which began in July. The office was expected to save counties $2.1 million overall and bring a net savings of $600,000 to taxpayers.
Leader hired in 2024
Christopher Miles was hired to head up the office. He’s since welcomed three additional attorneys and a paralegal, and is on the hunt for one more attorney.
The office took on its first cases in February, when the doors opened for appeals from the Sioux Falls and Rapid City areas. In July, it began to take appeals from the rest of the state.
The state office’s team is now working on appeals from Roberts, Hughes and Lawrence counties, on top of its caseload from the metro areas.
Miles and the other three lawyers each have about 10 cases to handle. Thirteen of them involve abuse and neglect. The rest involve felony convictions.
“We’re probably picking up a case every week,” Miles said.
The team has an office in Sioux Falls and one team member in Rapid City.
The only appellate court in South Dakota’s court system is the state Supreme Court. None of the appeals handled by the office have reached the Supreme Court for oral arguments, and the high court has yet to rule for or against the state’s public defenders in cases where they presented arguments on a client’s behalf.
Three cases have been resolved. Two defendants dropped their appeals after consultations with the public defense office. In the third case, the office found no appealable issues and told the state’s high court as much, but the client exercised their right to file their own appeal statement. The Supreme Court dismissed the client’s case by summary judgment, a short statement that doesn’t address specific legal issues.
You can read the full article at South Dakota Searchlight.