Welcome back overlap listeners.
I am so happy to have some really fun things here for you today.
I really hope you listened to last week's podcast.
If you didn't, I do recommend you go back and listen to last week's podcast where Will and I kind of tried a new little debate format.
And we were talking specifically about justice, justice reform and how budgets work within the federal government and the state level governments for public defense and how we
taking our own positions.
If you remember,
you
and kind of what it actually guaranteed versus what it ended up delivering.
We covered the 1994 crime bill, which was $30.2 billion for prosecution infrastructure and almost nothing for defense.
I think it was a million.
Jeff Sessions deleting the office for access to justice with a single memo in 2017.
The $106 million federal public defender shortfall from 2024, the Hurl-Haring versus New York class action lawsuit that forced caseload caps in five counties in New York state.
Also a man named Inzana who sat in an Oregon jail for months because the state ran out of lawyers and eventually had to let him go.
The 97 % federal plea rate as evidenced the system runs on waived rights, not trials.
But coming
to you today is not just myself and my wonderful co-host Will, Will say hello.
Hello everyone, good to be back with you.
Yes.
We also have a Travis County public defender, attorney Seth Mineta-Dillon from Travis County.
Seth, why don't you give us a sort of an overview of who you are.
Tell us the things you want to tell us, introduce yourself and set this up for the audience about what you've been doing up until this point.
Yeah, sure.
So for those who are not aware, Travis County is the county where Austin, Texas is located.
That is the capital of Texas.
um Most folks, most folks don't know about Travis, but they, you know, they've heard of Austin, obviously.
And so I have been here with the public defender's office for five years.
We were created five years ago and been here ever since.
Prior to that, I spent two years working private defense.
here in Travis County as the office kind of got set up and all the political machinations went through to its creation.
And then prior to that, I spent about two and a half years in Philadelphia at their public defender's office, which is an office that's been around for over 50 years at this point.
And it's a much larger scale and we can get into the differences between those two.
And then prior to that law school with William
Right, where's my ride or die co-counsel?
This is not just any public defender we have today.
This is one of the leading, in fact, national trial, national mock trial winner going back to way back in the day.
I will say this is probably the first time I've ever seen an actual benefit from having an attorney as a friend is that he knows other attorneys that he could bring on the podcast.
Well, Seth, I really do want to thank you very much for being here with us today.
You're actually our second only ever interview episode.
Usually we're either in a single format or a double format and we kind of talk about different topics.
So it's really cool to have you here as our second official interview guest.
Just for for our audience's sake, I'm going to have a little bit of Travis County context uh as well as Texas state context that I want to just go through a couple of facts about
Texas from a defense perspective.
So Texas actually ranks 46th of the 50 states nationally in state public defense spending.
We'll get a little bit more into that.
I just kind of want to rattle these off.
We can talk about our opinions about them or our feelings about them later.
I just want to get a little bit of context out there.
So state funds are about 13 percent of what they call indigent defense costs and the county actually carries the rest of it.
So the county is spending much, much more than the actual state of Texas is currently on indigent.
Wow.
Defense costs.
Also, CAFA, which is the Council at First Appearance, was actually only implemented in Travis County in early 2025 after the ACLU successfully sued Travis County.
Additionally, there's been a giant pay exodus within the Travis County Public Defender's Office because attorneys are essentially leaving for Harris County, who are...
the he's he's shaking his head if you can't see.
But of course you can't see this is an audio only podcast but he's shaking his head back and forth like maybe not maybe not maybe not.
And we can talk about that too.
I would describe an Exodus as anything more than 50 percent turnover rate and the for the sake of this this blurb it wasn't really you know laid out what the context was in those
numbers.
So I personally would say if it's more than half of your staff leaves and we've seen that.
happened quite a bit in the police force and several things around the country.
So they're leaving specifically for Harris County private practice and the Office of Fair Defense.
Additionally, uh Chief PDO, and that is Public Defender's Office, Chief Public Defender, CPD, Adiola Agunkayede called it Sophie's Choice.
because 75 % of the positions within Travis County's public defender's office are actually below the market rate for attorneys doing the same thing for other counties in Texas.
And 156 rural Texas counties have absolutely zero public defender's office at all, often using either a good old boy system or pulling from other counties as available.
Any of those off the top of your head that you go, nope, that's total BS or yes, absolutely all of those and accept them full bore.
I think the Exodus one, I think if you combined the different places, I don't think it's all to Harris County.
We can talk about OFD and what the Office of First Defense is and kind of its creation and its purpose.
But the rest of them, yeah, the rest of them sound accurate.
Cool.
Will, do you have any sort of pre-questionnaire, pre-interview oh facts, thoughts, or other ideas you'd like to put forward for our audience today?
I just, you know, that's you don't have to admit that you went into being a PD for the money.
We all know that that's why everybody goes into it.
But seriously, I mean, obviously, like we're just glad to have you here.
You're a wealth of knowledge that you've got experience in various public defenders office.
I know it get a little bit more into your backstory prior to coming to Travis County.
yeah, I mean, it's just, it's I'm thankful.
I know because if I ever find myself in situation where I needed a public defender.
I would be very glad to have someone with your caliber and skill set on that.
So Travis is lucky to have you and we're lucky to have you on the podcast today.
So that's all the smoke I'm going to blow for now.
Sounds good.
Alright then.
welcome back overlap listeners.
Thank you again so much for being here.
If you are just picking us up now, make sure to rewind to the first, you know why we're here, what we're doing, and we know that we're here with public defender, Seth Dillon,
Seth Minetta Dillon.
So before we get into sort of the policy side of things, I wanna get a feel, I want you to tell us who you are and what your work actually looks like day to day.
Right?
Like not like the headline version, like, I'm a public defender and I work for Travis County.
We did that in the beginning.
You can listen to that, but kind of what a normal week feels like for you.
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
think I'm gonna, start out with what my current week looks like here in Austin, right?
Because it is very different than what it looked like when I was a public defender in Philly.
And I think comparing those two could actually be pretty interesting.
So what we do here in Austin is what's called vertical representation.
and you mentioned CAFA, which is Council at First Appearance.
That is where we go in and it all starts there, right?
And it's a rain mit.
We have arraignment based on the level of cases you're taking.
Maybe you're taking misdemeanors, you're taking more serious felonies.
If you're taking a heavier caseload, meaning more serious felonies, you will be in CAFA a little bit less.
If you're taking a bunch of misdemeanors, you'll be in there a little bit more frequently.
But that's where every case for us starts.
These are folks who have just been arrested, could have been less than 24 hours ago, less than 48 hours ago if it's a felony.
And we're the first attorney that they talk to.
We get their basic information.
We very briefly go over what happened.
And what we're doing is we're making a pitch to the magistrate for this person to get out of jail.
So they don't have to sit in jail during the pendency of their case.
Because in Travis County, cases do not go fast.
They can take, a misdemeanor can easily take one to two years.
Which is often shocking for a lot of folks when they hear that they go, wait, a misdemeanor takes over a year.
It's like, yeah, that is the regular business here in Travis County.
And there's a lot of reasons why that is that we don't have to get into, but that is the amount of time.
So that's where we meet our clients.
And they are our clients at that point throughout.
So during a regular week, what I'm doing, yeah.
interrupt, but just for people who may not have as much context or background on this, essentially when someone's read their rights, their Miranda rights, right?
Like the rights remain silent.
Can they say, can it be used against them in a court of law?
You have the right to an attorney.
If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you.
Is that essentially you?
Like you're that guy, the attorney that will be provided for you if you can't afford one?
Or is it, okay.
So.
a public defender, I represent folks who cannot afford an attorney.
There's metrics that they use to make that determination.
But yes, that is correct.
So when they first booked, um they're going to go through some process where they indicate whether they have their own attorney or they need an attorney to be provided for them.
Correct.
Okay, thanks.
I just wanted to clear that up for those who may not have the background and to show off that I watch cops and still no Miranda rights even though I'm a civil litigator by trade.
What do you mean?
98 % of all cases they read those Miranda rights and if they don't they just get off scot-free they just walk away.
away, yeah.
Well, we can talk about that in Travis County, though it seems like the practice is to avoid reading Miranda at all costs.
But yes, that is so we represent folks who are qualified, meaning they cannot afford their own attorney.
And so we represent them at Magistration where the judge is going to determine one, is there enough probable cause, is there probable cause to keep them in jail?
we will often argue against saying, no, Judge, if you read this probable cause affidavit, it doesn't actually make out a crime, which you would think doesn't happen a lot, but it
actually happens probably three, four times per shift.
A shift is an eight hour shift.
And so in a batch of, yeah.
three to four times, mean a shift is essentially a day, mean, right?
Like I mean it would be what the average person works in a day of work.
Three to four times, it's just like yeah, this case has no merit.
We're not even gonna bother.
I mean, don't quote me on the exact number, but having done enough, yes, yeah, it's about three to four times where we can at least make a colorable argument that like, judge, this
isn't a crime.
uh Like sometimes you read it and you go, this is just by definition not a crime.
Take for example, one I had where, look, this is Texas, right?
So we love our guns.
famously concealed carry is now a thing in Texas, which means,
unless you are otherwise prohibited from having a gun for some other reason, anybody can walk around with, I shouldn't say anybody, assuming you're the legal age and everything,
but uh you can walk around with a gun in your pocket as long as it's completely concealed.
You don't need a permit, you don't need anything special.
And I had a case, yep, and I had a case where that was exactly what happened, is they said my client,
um, might maybe have gotten into a fight with somebody and when they stopped him, he had a gun in his pocket.
but they literally put, but we couldn't see it until we first him and I well, this is not a crime.
And yet they had arrested him anyway, had taken his gun and I had to argue against the prosecutor who, who was a former judge who kept insisting that there was enough probable
cause.
the case got dismissed.
immediately because the judge who was working said, yeah, there's not probable cause here.
This is not a crime.
That kind of thing happens probably three to four times per shift.
And we only see 30 to 40 cases in a shift.
So yeah, I mean, it happens a lot.
And that goes, you know, that goes to the politics of Travis County and what the incentives of the police are.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard on body camera, let the attorneys figure it out.
It's kind of an arrest first, ask questions later jurisdiction.
And they'll tell you otherwise, but I've seen enough body cameras to know that their instinct is, well, let's put somebody in handcuffs and it's no big deal if they have to go
for a ride because their attorney will figure it out.
So that's what happens at council of first appearance that and then the second part, first part being probable cause.
Second part is what bond amount and what conditions will this person need, right?
And for those who don't know bond or bail, they're basically the same word.
They, it means it's a permission slip is the way I describe it to folks.
It's like if you were in high school and you needed a hall pass to go to the bathroom, when you're out on bond, it is essentially a hall pass.
It's a pass to be out in the community.
while you have a criminal case pending.
And that hall pass can sometimes come with conditions.
Might be getting random your analysis tests.
It could be taking some classes.
It could be staying away and not having contact with somebody.
It could be having a device in your car that you have to blow into.
There's all sorts of different conditions that a judge can set.
And so part of our job is to one, argue that this person shouldn't have to pay anything to get out, or at least to keep that number as low as possible.
And then two, to try to limit whatever the conditions are, because most of these conditions are pretty onerous.
And they seem minor, but when you have to do them day in and day out, and your case takes a year, it can be a lot to comply with all of these things.
So that's what happens at CAFA.
Now, I believe the original question was, what's an average week, right?
So with that kind of backdrop, an average week is going into court, checking in with the prosecutor about a case.
telling them we don't have this evidence, we're gonna need this evidence, negotiating.
That's usually the morning, you know, then coming back, replying to emails and then watching evidence and building your defense.
uh Could be talking with your investigators because we are a holistic office, which means that we provide, we try to provide services that go beyond just the criminal defense
aspect of the case.
We try to connect our clients with
social programs that they might need that are getting to the root of maybe why they find themselves in this position.
We have a lot of meetings with our social workers, our case workers, to make sure that every client is getting the most out of what we can provide them so that they don't end up
here again.
um And so I would say, that's most of the day.
I hadn't heard about that, those sort of supplemental or guess adjacent services you provide, those, is there state funding for those specifically or is that just something
you all have decided as an office to do?
So it's kind of a combination what our office was created.
It was you know, the initial funding came from a state of Texas I Guess agency called the TIDC the Texas Indent see Defense Commission I can't believe that's what it's called, but
they provide kind of you can think of it like a startup They provide the startup capital to get the office open the county has to pitch in 50 %
just to get it open.
And then after five years, they stopped providing the funding, the state organization and the county is the one who covers the cost.
TIDC still may be providing some level of funding, but they're not providing as much as they used to.
So when we started, we pitched or our chief pitched the offices, this is gonna be a holistic model.
It's going to provide services beyond just the criminal defense.
We're gonna have social workers on staff.
We're gonna have caseworkers on staff.
We're gonna have paralegals and it's not paralegals in the traditional sense.
The traditional sense, right, somebody who's filing some basic motions, doing your calendar, that kind of thing.
Our paralegals are more civil advocates.
They help our clients navigate the huge number of bureaucracies that they have to deal with.
So they assist them in getting their SSI turned back on.
They will assist them in getting driver's licenses, in applying for health insurance.
All the things that would take anybody kind of a lot of time and effort to just navigate those folks are quote, paralegals or civil advocates are helping our clients navigate that
so that they can get those really critical resources.
Yeah, I think that's interesting too.
Social workers, how do you see or how do you feel exists the sort of line between what a social worker or a civil advocate is really sort of doing on the non-legal defense side
versus what you're doing?
And do you find that there's sometimes overlap and do you find some bleed back and forth based upon how you feel or what you think is appropriate?
Absolutely.
think, you you got to remember that there are plenty of folks who get themselves entangled in this system.
And I would say that the vast majority, it's not by choice, right?
We all want to believe, somebody found themselves in this place.
It's because they made a choice.
They made a conscious decision to do something that ended up resulting in them getting charged with a crime.
And while they're
Absolutely could be some level of choice to it a lot of times.
It's not something that's very clearly within their control, right?
They're the impacts of poverty.
There's the impacts of mental health.
There's the impacts of addiction and And if you don't address those root causes Then you're just creating a cycle where somebody comes in goes out comes in goes out comes in
goes out if you really want to stop that kind of
repeat behavior, that kind of cycle, you've got to get to the things that are actually causing it.
And that could be helping clients get into a treatment program, which we do on the daily.
That could be helping clients get their food stamps turned on, or get some housing resources, which we do on the daily.
Because if somebody has a roof over their head, or they've got a hot meal to eat, they're a lot less likely to go looking for those basic needs somewhere else.
Right?
And by somewhere else, I mean, maybe some retail theft, right?
Okay, going to
Target or CVS, can't tell you the number of clients I've had who are alleged to have taken like body wash, shampoo from a Target, right?
These are not folks who are trying to get rich.
that's not TVs.
That's general needs for everyday people.
That they're struggling with.
you know, how does it compare?
They are part and parcel of what we are doing, often more important, honestly, because in Travis County, Travis County prosecutors, they are, you know, as much as I will complain
about them, the culture here is they tend to be a little more understanding.
And so I can walk in there and go, look, this is a this is a circumstance situation where they're working with our social work team.
We're going to try to get them set up with the things that they need.
And they're usually like, OK, yeah, not a problem.
Let us know how that's going and then eventually the case will get dismissed.
I think as it should, they understand that the solution here is not X number of days in jail, because that's not gonna do anything, that's not gonna help anybody, it's just gonna
create a repeat.
Whereas getting them the resources they need is gonna be something that can hopefully put them in a position where they don't need to go do some other activities.
That kind of leads into my next question.
Is there something that you've been really wanting people to either understand about this work or to know?
Something that you really, you know, don't really get a chance to say to the broader public at large.
Yeah, I think, you know, there is, there's a myth, right?
And it's common, and it's about the public defender.
And it is absolutely in some ways true, but it's also in some ways false.
And what that myth is, is that like, if you get a public defender, you're getting an attorney who is not as good as somebody you would pay.
And so like, the public writ large, the reason I say, look, there's plenty of folks who don't qualify for our services because they make too much money.
That's fine.
know, they should, you know, that's a whole other philosophical issue should you even have to ever pay for an attorney.
you know, that's fine.
But for a lot of folks, they get appointed a public defender and then they are.
working really hard to save up enough money to go hire somebody.
And I think what I would want to tell the public at large is the people I've worked with in Philly and here are some of the best attorneys, the most hardworking attorneys.
There's a myth that like, oh, well, you know, if you were really that good, you would like go do it privately and, you know, make more money.
But there's a lot of other reasons that we do what we do.
And so I think
That's what I want the public.
Like you're getting a really good advocate if you get a PD in almost every place that I've seen.
And I know we're gonna talk about this, but the overworked high caseloads, yes, that is a thing, that happens.
But that doesn't mean that the person you're getting isn't going to bust their butt for you and get you a really good result.
And ultimately,
you know, we're talking dollars and cents here, like it will cost you thousands of dollars to go to a private defense attorney.
And some of them are great, but some of them just are not as good as the people who are working my office currently.
And then the office I've worked with in Philly, um, hands down.
And so I just kind of wish people had a clear review.
They want to hire somebody, go for it.
That's obviously you're right.
But, sometimes you're, you're paying for not as great of representation, not always.
But sometimes you are.
And so there's the quality of representation, right?
And then there's also the resources you have.
So I mean, you have a great lawyer, but if they're underfunded, the resources may not be there for them.
Like you said, their case load goes too high or whatever.
And that's a different, that's a systemic problem, but it's not a problem with the quality of representation.
Do you find yourself having to educate your clients on that a lot?
yeah, I mean absolutely, find, I think this is an old adage, I don't think telling people, we use it in trial court all time, don't tell them, show them.
And so you can tell clients every day, we've got these resources.
Next time they're in court, if you have a social worker there who's gonna show them, hey we can do this, let's set a meeting, let's get you these resources, that immediately
people go, wow, this is an office I can trust, these are people that will.
help me get what I need, they're not just giving me lip service.
And so that's the approach I tend to take.
Don't expect the client to come asking for resources because they've probably had experiences of like broken promises or having to jump through way too many hoops.
Like let's go to them and show them what we can do for them.
And then they're much more likely to utilize the resources that we have available for them.
was gonna say just to your point, Will, one thing I wanted to point out too is that there's a myth, right?
I think a lot of people have seen TV shows, the Lincoln Lawyer comes to mind, Both a show and a movie.
And I haven't seen the show, but if it's like the movie, that one attorney had an investigator like on call.
Right.
I think people have this belief about private defense attorneys that they have an investigator on call.
There may be some that do, but the ones I know they do not.
They may have an investigator that they work with regularly, but that costs money.
And I think a lot of people don't realize like, no, that adds to your bill.
That doesn't come part and parcel when you hire an attorney as the PD office.
I am literally right now pointing to the desk across from me and that's my investigator.
And so we are constantly talking about cases.
are constantly planning and strategizing and that kind of efficiency and access for me, helps me do my job way better.
And it's not just true with the investigators, true with social worker, with the case worker, with the paralegal.
Everybody is here in the office and you get that efficiency by being in one place in one group and you get the institutional knowledge.
And if there's a legal topic I don't understand, I can go to another attorney who may be more of an expert in it.
I just think if you're on your own on an island, it's really hard to get that.
So, you know, I like to tell people, you know, like, yeah, we are your attorney.
It's not just me, it's the whole office.
And that is true in a legal sense, and that attorney-client privilege connects, but it's also true in a practical sense, because you're getting the benefit of everybody's
experience and everybody's knowledge versus just one individual person.
So.
Yeah, and I think people will have this misconception, like you said, that they're gonna go out and get Dixie Garren to represent them.
That's just not how it goes, you know.
Yeah, I mean if you're a real estate tycoon, you can do it.
You can afford it.
You can get all those services.
But if not, I mean, wouldn't you prefer a law firm to be working for you rather than one person?
I don't know.
That's so.
Yeah, and I was just pulling, I pulled some stats just to sort of bolster the numbers game.
A lot of people who haven't hired an attorney before, they have no idea what it costs.
mean, basically there's just this belief it's just expensive and if you have to ask, you can't afford it, know, kind of a thing.
In Texas specifically, a criminal defense retainer, and that's just your first payment for our listeners out there, for a misdemeanor is gonna be somewhere between 1500 bucks and
5000.
just a misdemeanor, and they burn it.
If they don't use it, you still lose it, it doesn't matter.
Felonies, you're looking anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 of a retainer just to get an attorney started.
And a serious felony murder, federal crime, something of that, we're looking between 25,000 and 100,000 plus as an initial retainer to hire a private defense attorney.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Yeah.
So I mean, it's not anything cheap.
So in our debate last week, we described the system sort of as a processing center.
And I mean, I know you've kind of covered a little bit of this, but lawyers kind of meeting clients for the first time five minutes before a plea hearing in a hallway.
That's what you see on the cop shows, you know, and where there's a public defender at all.
Is that I mean, is there any truth to that whatsoever?
You described a situation where obviously you guys are doing a good job, right?
I mean, it sounds like you're making a lot of effort.
sounds like your clients are well are well defended.
But because of sort of the realities of both workload and funding, both at a county level as well as at a state level, would you describe any of that to be reality in maybe some of
the smaller counties around Texas, like the hundred and fifty six that don't even have a
Public Defender's Office.
Yes, mean it's true in Travis County too.
Yeah, and I can, and this might be a good time to kind of talk about my experience in Philadelphia.
So here we have what's called BRD.
It's called bond reduction docket.
It's a misnomer.
It's not what it's intended for.
You could get your bond reduced if you do not take the plea, but really it's a plea docket.
What does that mean?
It means, right now it's for misdemeanor cases where the
client is still in custody.
And so they've had their registration, right?
That was maybe a few days ago and their bond got set at some level.
They couldn't make it.
Whatever it was, they couldn't pay it.
Hopefully, the attorney went to a judge and said, hey, you know, the judge that the case got assigned to, hey, will you lower this bond and try to get the person out?
know, our attorneys will do that.
Not every attorney does it, but ours will.
Maybe the judge said no.
And so the person is still stuck in jail on a misdemeanor.
And so what Travis County has in those situations, assuming there's no other reason, it's not following a related felony or something like that, the person doesn't have a hold for
some other thing, out of county or federal hold, then it will get placed on bond reduction docket.
And what happens at bond reduction docket is you show up and you may not have all the evidence and they make you an offer.
and you're duty bound of course to convey that offer to your client and explain to your client, look we don't have all the evidence.
I can ask for a lower bond amount or we can negotiate and you can take that offer today.
And so now in our case, right, we are meeting our clients at Magistration.
So they've met us but it could be a few days later we're telling them, hey do you want to take this plea?
It is their right, we advise them but ultimately if that's what they want, you know.
then we go through with it.
And we try to get as much of the evidence as we can, but sometimes like the body cameras just haven't been uploaded yet.
So we don't have complete evidence and we've asked for it, that's on the prosecutors and the police for not turning it over.
But ultimately if the client is well informed and they wanna take the plea, that's all right.
But some attorneys, not from our office, will show up and that's where they're getting their client.
So yes, they've met their client five minutes before and they're saying, hey, do you want to take this plea?
Some of these cases are open and shut, right?
Some of them are criminal trespass and the client clearly was doing something they wouldn't be and you can talk to the client, the client's like, yeah, that's fine, time
served, yeah, I'm good with it.
I've got 10 criminal trespasses, what's one more?
I just want out.
Again.
as is their right.
But as far as the quick rocket docket, which is what it's known, not just locally, but everywhere, yeah, that absolutely happens.
Small counties, I imagine it's the same thing.
Yeah.
Okay, so I mean, obviously there was some issues again with New York as well in some of the facts we talked about previously where it's that sort of, was a problem for New York
State as a whole and they were running into not just the open and shut, clearly the client's fine with it, the client in some cases was expecting help, was expecting
legitimate concern, was expecting legitimate.
you
they just simply weren't receiving it and were saying, look, this is your choice.
You pick this plea or, you whatever.
And I wanted to make sure that we sort of talked about those things.
Now, it does sound like Travis County has made a lot of positive changes in the last few years, some because of the court outcome, right?
Which is the process that we've been
sort of handed as a way.
Now, if you did listen, I did take the opinion of I think the whole thing needs to be scrapped.
Like I think we got to go to a one to one model.
If we're going to fund defense, we should I mean, if we're to fund prosecution, we should fund defense at the same clip.
What is I mean, what is a good outcome actually look like for one of your clients?
Right.
Like what is what is a bad one look like?
Not and it doesn't have to be dramatically bad, like just kind of the the ordinary kind of loss that comes from the system working the way the system was designed.
Yeah, which by the way, love that idea.
$1 to $1.
That's, that's way, I agree with that.
What's the ideal?
I mean, a good outcome.
mean, I think a good outcome is if somebody can avoid a conviction, they think if they can avoid something that will stay with them forever.
It's not always a good outcome because sometimes the impacts go beyond what's on paper, right?
You've, you've got sure.
Maybe I avoided a conviction, but
in the process of being prosecuted for this alleged offense, I lost my job.
I had to move out of my house.
I lost my car.
I mean, there's a lot of impacts that go beyond the conviction.
And so it's hard, know, if a client's able to avoid any serious collateral consequences and walk away with an outcome that does not
impact their life, I would call that a positive.
That's a good outcome.
It depends on the person.
So for example, I may have a client who has a handful of felony convictions, but none that are gonna stop them from working a blue collar job.
They can still get paid.
There are some sex offenses, a lot of times theft offenses that things that employers are like, I don't wanna touch this.
But if you're doing construction work and you've got an aggravated assault on your record, they might not care as long as you can do the work and show up on time.
They're good with that.
And so maybe taking a misdemeanor conviction on some case is fine for them.
They got out on bond, they didn't lose their job, a misdemeanor isn't gonna change anything in their life, it's not gonna impact their custody of their kids, it's not gonna
impact whatever resources they're getting, if they're getting any.
And so to them, they're like, yeah, it's fine.
It's one more, it ain't gonna change my life.
Like, let's do it.
And then I can just be done with, you know, with the impacts of this.
Cause a lot of times the punishment is the process or the process is the punishment.
And so, yeah.
And what would you say?
mean, knowing those likely outcomes as you do from your experience, mean, that's that's that only comes with experience, right?
They don't really teach that in law school.
At least I didn't get that class.
But, you know, if you I think that's one of the reasons it's important to keep the system funded and to keep, you know, experienced public defenders able to live off of their
salaries, you know, because people need that, right?
People don't want to get trapped in these situations where they're ruining their whole life to take a
plea bargain for a short-term benefit,
Yes, I agree.
um that goes to very big systemic change and changing the opinions and the beliefs of those who are in positions of power within the system.
And mainly that's judges, but it's also prosecutors.
I mean, they have a complete misconception, a lot of them, of like, how are you gonna help change someone's life?
Right?
And like really,
And this gets to big philosophical questions of like, is this system even for?
You know, I think realistically, if we're talking about, you I think a lot of us would hope that it's for rehabilitation or it's for diversion or it's hoping that like, if
somebody assuming that they in fact did cause some kind of harm, I know why did they cause that harm and what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again?
And a lot of times, as I said, that means getting them the resources that they need.
both the person who may have caused the harm and the person who was harmed.
And unfortunately, I think that there are those who designed the system, if we're being honest, and probably continue to perpetuate its existence in its current form, that are
not really concerned with rehabilitation.
They're not concerned with making sure that the crime rates go down.
In fact, they probably wanna see the crime rates go up, because that's not their goal.
And their goal is oppression and their goal is trying to keep certain populations from gaining power and from being successful.
I mean, unfortunately, the history bears that out, right?
right?
Now you're starting to actually speak the language of the overlap along with us.
And I want to say, I think that sometimes there's uh sort of an unfair KPI here.
I think that from a perspective of somebody who values equal justice more than necessarily just justice,
they're going to say, you know, the KPI for you doing a good job or a good outcome is that you got the client off.
You got the client, you know, the case dismissed or you kept from the conviction.
And, you know, if, if you're, if it's the opposite perspective and they are more on the side of the DA or they were one of the victims, justice probably to them looks a little
bit more like you got, you know, you, you had a crappy defense and it got the, the, prosecutor, the, the win.
and that person goes to jail or for whatever reason.
I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm gonna sort of paraphrase here.
It sounds like you're saying that ultimately the best KPI is that they got a valid, a good defense just as though they were any person actually paying for it.
In some cases, maybe better.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Yes.
cool.
The from the other side seems to be it really comes into play.
There's systemic issues, but for an individual, lead to the level of that DA position, now you're both a prosecutor and a politician, and you got to defend your tough on crime
stance or whatever.
The only stats that they care about are convictions and how many quote unquote dangerous people, tend to, yeah, there's like a dog whistle word, but the number of dangerous
criminals you kept off the streets, that's your record, right?
And so that's gonna...
incentive there is to get the person to serve time or do whatever to say, hey, I kept these dangerous people off the streets.
Whereas my opponent was whatever.
And that seems to be not really serving the public very well.
But that's the system we have.
Yeah, well, if you look the AG in Texas.
yeah, right.
You've got to ask yourself.
And as I was listening to y'all's last episode that, you know, it came to mind, I was like, I work with a lot of different kinds of prosecutors of different experience levels.
And the ones that are the most reasonable in my case, or my, my opinion, I should say, are
the folks who are willing to listen, they have perspective, and they're ultimately they care about, you know, the long term impact and almost to say quality of life of both
sides.
In Texas, there's a constitutional mandate that prosecutors seek to do justice.
And that's not defined.
And there's a reason for that.
Like that might mean dismissing a case.
might mean
offering a very reasonable plea offer because they're not intended to just seek convictions.
And I think that unfortunately a lot of the culture of lot of prosecutors offices, because it's easy to just cite your conviction rate or to talk about the number of years that you
pledged, got somebody to plead to is,
it's easy to cite those numbers and then that becomes the goal.
Whereas you should get more credit for, man, you know what?
The defense attorney presented me this mitigation and ultimately we're gonna give this guy a chance.
I prosecutors should probably be judged on recidivism rates.
How often did they get an outcome where the person didn't go to prison and didn't end up having a new offense?
And that can be because they got creative and they wanted classes and that kind of thing.
But unfortunately, that's not the culture in a lot of their offices.
And while we're still on the point of philosophical, you know, or political philosophy here, I mean, I think they should reflect, like you said, the chug on the quality of life.
There's a quality of life for, you know, the prosecution side, for the government side, which is supposed to represent the people, right?
Ideally, it's the people versus not the DA versus.
But the quality of life thing is important too, because these are the people you're putting in jail or not putting in jail or the people you're getting to plea out.
you you
jobs and work jobs and support, you know, they can pay taxes and support the government that way.
But also even for the tough on crime folks, it's like, yeah, you'll see people who have no problem undercutting the public defender's office and they have $106 million shortfall.
But the reality is when you don't have the public defender there, that's somebody else that's going to be in jail.
And you know how much it costs to house a prisoner?
A lot more than it costs to have a PD on a case.
That's what people should be thinking about is long-term.
Like if this person pleads for two years of prison time that they didn't have to do, now you're paying them for their room and board for the rest of that time as a taxpayer.
So a little short-sighted to think, know, them away, put them away.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard judges, even though these are our clients, right?
They've been by the court, they have been declared indigent, meaning they cannot afford an attorney.
And yet we still have to ask the judges to waive fees for things like monitors, alcohol monitors, waive fees for classes.
There's a fee in Texas.
to get a personal recognizance bond.
A personal recognizance bond for those who don't know is where you just sign your name and you say, I promise I'm gonna show up.
And now if you don't show up, they can issue a warrant, you know, that kind of thing.
But in Texas, the whole point is that you don't have to pay money, but there's a fee to get the bond and it's $40.
And it's like, wait, I thought this was something I didn't have to pay for.
um
fee.
but there's a processing fee.
And so we have to ask for those things to be waived.
And in most cases they are waived, but there's some judges who are like, well, indigent doesn't mean, I'm like, it does mean that they can't afford it, like by definition.
And so they're always worried about, that they cite the taxpayers money.
well, the taxpayers are, and I'm like, the taxpayers are gonna pay a lot more if you put this person in jail and have them wait in jail for their trial.
Right.
And it's like they don't make that connection.
the monitor or the breathalyzer or whatever, somebody else might get hurt by them making another, getting caught up in another bad situation.
Somebody else could get hurt or, yeah.
Again, it's short-sighted, but that's why we're here, to educate our audience, hopefully.
there was something Joshua that you had touched on about, you know, Travis County doing a pretty good job as far as not having crushing caseloads like we've all heard about.
And uh while that is true currently, unfortunately, we are starting to get to the point where that may start to become more of an issue.
And the reason is, ironically, when the public defender's office was created,
there was also an issue with how much they paid court appointed attorneys.
And so just to kind of make sure the difference is clear, right?
A public defender is somebody who works in an office with other attorneys, investigators, social worker, case workers, et cetera.
And a client will get assigned to that office.
And then the office will represent that person in the way it sees fit consistent with their legal duties.
Meaning the person doesn't choose which public defender they get.
The office chooses which public defender they get.
But the person
client gets assigned to the office.
If you don't get assigned to the public defender's office because there could be a conflict where we represent the other person in the case or we have represented a witness
or for a variety of reasons, you and you still qualify for a court appointed attorney, you'll get a private attorney who the court will pay for.
They don't pay them their normal rate.
They pay them a reduced rate that has been agreed on by the county.
Mm-hmm.
many private attorneys will take court appointments.
They'll take those clients.
And there was a, you go back a few years and there was a debate over like what they were paying because it was a very low amount.
It was like, I want to say it was one to $200 for a misdemeanor for the whole case.
Right?
And so when your incentives are aligned that way, you're incentivized to just move them as quick as possible because if it took you a day or if it took you a year,
you were getting basically the same price.
Yeah, you might get a little bit more if it went to trial, you might get a little bit more if there was emotion involved, but if it was just basic reviewing discovery and leading to
a plea, you were getting the same amount.
And so what happened, where people were taking an unbelievably large amount of cases, because they were trying to make ends meet, right?
And so it makes sense.
That has changed.
They're now an hour, they're getting paid hourly now and it's a, you know, there's a debate over whether or not the rate they're getting paid is reasonable.
What I can tell you is that whatever that rate is, it's not enough because they don't have enough attorneys.
They don't have enough attorneys taking cases that the public defender doesn't take.
And so there are a lot of clients right now who are waiting days, weeks to get their court appointed attorney assigned.
And so now it's like,
has spoken, it's not working.
Yeah, and so it's either you either raise the rates to get more attorneys to take those court-appointed cases or where do they go?
Oh, well, here's a sponge that can seemingly just keep soaking it up and they try to send it to the PD's office.
And so then we start to go over the case caps that they've set our limits that, you know, to good representation.
So that is unfortunately on the horizon for Travis County.
And so in those 150 plus counties that Joshua was talking about in Texas where they don't have a PD's office, that's basically what they're learning to, right?
Is they're gonna get court appointed lawyers at whatever rate they've worked out.
Wow.
you you mentioned earlier, think Joshua said it was like a good old boy system.
And in some of these counties, it is.
In Travis County, they operate on what's called the wheel, meaning, you know, let's say you have 50 attorneys that can take misdemeanor A, which is the highest misdemeanor level.
They all kind of stand in line.
You get your case, and then you go to the back of the line and you wait until your turn comes up again.
So it operates kind of like a wheel.
And so that way there's no unfair system where attorneys might be getting more cases than another attorney.
Now, Travis County did not used to work that way.
That wheel system came about, oh, at this point, I think it was maybe 10-ish years ago, because there were five attorneys who were getting a huge amount of cases.
And...
They were getting cases for who knows why, but the judges were the ones who were appointing the cases and it just so happened that these five just kept getting a lot of
cases.
Just having a room with the judge in law school and, you know, be married to the judge's niece or nephew or, yeah.
a lot of these small counties, I imagine it operates kind of similar.
They may not have a wheel system that judges appoint and I would not be shocked if a certain handful of folks just get all the appointments.
And so yeah, if you're out there, that's what you deal with.
There are no public defender's offices.
Now there are a few, there's regional ones.
There may be three or four that cover a couple counties, but that doesn't mean they're taking the bulk of the cases and for all the rest, yeah, they're doing court appointed.
to whatever degree they can.
Yeah.
Now, if I'm not, if my research hasn't uh given up on me, Travis County recently consolidated its public defenders offices into kind of one department.
That is correct.
Yes, we had a juvenile public defender's office.
We had the adult public defender's office, which is where I work.
And we had a mental health public defender's office.
And the MH, the juvenile public defender's office has been around for, I want to say like 50 years.
It's been around a while.
I could get that number could be way off, but it's been around a while.
The mental health public defender's office, I think since the early 2000s has been around and then we were created five years ago.
And as part of the grant that created our office, there was a requirement to consider consolidation.
And then ultimately the county felt like that, you know, for economies of scale, you you didn't have to have three chiefs, you could have one chief.
And so that's what happened.
Which ultimately goes to, or at least seemingly on the surface, goes to better outcomes and more clients served and more attorneys versus more chiefs.
I mean, the cost for an attorney versus a chief, I'm sure, is likely on the two to one scale.
So from where you sit, has that been in real practice an improvement or is it?
Basically just a reorganization and doesn't really actually change the underlying resource problem.
I'm probably gonna give a lawyer answer and say little column A, little column B.
Yeah, but I mean, yes, so our building, I'm on the third floor now, our fourth floor is our mental health unit.
And so then, yes, we have technology these days, yes, you can reach out to anybody, but them being physically that close, I can pop into an office, I can ask a question about a
complex mental health issue that a client might be having from the people who are the experts in it.
Juvenile they are in a different office because they have a different court and so they're not here So I don't talk to them quite as much but I do know that being part of the same
office it creates continuity of representation We're able to pass our notes along easier.
We're able to share resources and pool resources.
So there's a lot of benefit to it
Um, so look, we, we spent a good chunk of the last episode basically arguing whether this system is kind of failing by design or by neglect.
Um, whether the 94 crime bills investment in prosecution in prisons with nothing for defense was kind of a conscious choice or kind of a political blind spot.
And now I'm not asking you to pick a side, but I'm, genuinely curious.
from your chair and where you're working every day, does that distinction feel meaningful?
Yeah, I think it does.
mean, the outcome is the same, right?
But I think it does because it goes to how do you fix it?
think if it's by neglect, think that's what Will was arguing.
That suggests that you have a system that's populated by good actors who just need a better answer.
Whereas I think that if it's by design, you've got a whole other battle on your hands.
And you've got people who may be saying, yeah, we wanna do X, Y, and Z, but they're being disingenuine.
So I do think that there is a critical difference.
At the end of the day, think the outcome is the same, which is that we've got underfunded offices.
And those underfunded offices, we have a high burnout rate because folks have a lot of, there's trauma to the job, sure, right?
But if you can't...
family, if you've got other priorities that this job is making impossible to address, then you're going to leave somewhere else even if you really want to be here.
So do you have a position on which of the two it is that they collect versus that you're willing to share?
Notice I specifically did not ask you to pick a side.
I asked you if you felt like the distinction was meaningful.
I'm just asking you if you'd like to air it on here, you're welcome to.
If not, it's too complicated.
I can totally accept that as well.
I think what I have learned in the work that I've done in Travis County, one, think because I've just gotten older and two, because our office has been very.
active in advocating with the county for its needs.
And I say that both our leadership has done so, but also our line folks have done.
We've organized, we've gone to the county, we've done, call it like a little protest kind of thing.
We got in the news, we've spoken at hearings.
And I think there's this, especially in politics today, we wanna oversimplify.
We want to believe that folks who may be making decisions that we don't agree with are doing it because of nefarious beliefs or intentions.
That is absolutely true in cases.
But I think in Travis County, the bigger challenge is that we're often dealing with folks who do genuinely believe that they're making the right call and the right decision.
It's just that they have different priorities.
It's that the
the background belief or story that they're functioning with is not one that we would agree with.
And I can give you a specific example of that.
um So it's a minor example, but we went to our the head of our county, or they're called the county judge oddly, and their commissioners court is what it's called.
It's like city council for the county.
And since we're a county office, we're funded by the county.
And we were talking
to the county judge who is essentially like the mayor of the county.
And we were talking about our investigators.
Our investigators in our office, they go out into the field, they talk to witnesses, they do all the things you've seen in movies, right?
Like that really is their job.
Well, the district attorney's office, they have investigators too, many of them former police officers.
You would think, well, they must be going out into the field too.
They must be looking for witnesses, talking to witnesses.
They're not doing that.
Why are they not doing it?
Because that's what the police are doing, right?
Which makes sense.
That's what the police, that's their job.
And they have a budget for that.
The folks at the county are pretty much just trying to like make some phone calls, maybe like getting some evidence from the evidence warehouse and bringing it into the office.
Maybe calling a witness or two, sending a subpoena out.
They're not doing field work from what I've ever seen.
I've never seen them go out, try to pull surveillance or anything like that.
And yet they get paid $30,000 more than our investigators.
So they're doing less work and they're getting paid more.
And there's politics behind that, right?
Like I said, they're former law enforcement officers.
And that may not be explicitly why, but when they left their law enforcement job and they came over here, well, we needed to pay them some things to get them to come work for us.
And so, you know, that's where these salaries are.
And we went to talk to
the county judge and say, look, this is unfair.
We want this discrepancy rectified.
Like our folks are actually doing this work.
They're knocking on doors.
They're putting their butts on the line because not everybody they'll try to talk to wants to talk to them.
And we got a question of, well, can they take the, do they carry a gun?
No, they do not carry a gun for a variety of reasons.
People don't usually want to talk to someone who carries a gun.
Well, can they do this police training?
No, they're not gonna do a six month police training.
That would be six months that we don't have them working on their cases and it's not gonna teach them anything they don't already know.
And this is, so we're dealing with folks who just don't, they don't get it.
Like they don't understand why an investigator for defense would not wanna go spend six months doing a training that's not gonna benefit them.
It's just a credential, it doesn't mean anything.
And these are the people making the decisions.
And so they're just uninformed, unfortunately.
So this is all to say, the original question is, is it neglect or is it intent?
I do think that there are plenty of people who work within the system who absolutely have the intent.
Yes, right?
They're not necessarily scared of the public defender's office, but they would love for this to be an unequal system because for them, the system is not intended for justice.
It's for power and control.
of various communities and populations.
And then there's others who like, it is neglect.
So do I think, mean, to Will's point, if you were to get proper funding, if we were to get a dollar to a dollar, would that actually solve the issue?
No, because you would still have a ton of bad actors within the system.
So you kind of have to, you have to deal with both.
Yeah, that's what worries me to be honest at the end of the day is I'm sure there are bad actors.
I'm sure there are people uninformed and then there are good actors who are thwarted by other forces.
But at end of day, if the bad actors are in control and that's the reason we're in the situation we're in now, no amount of legislation or no amount of reworking or anything is
going to fix that because even if you gave a dollar to a dollar, they'd find a way to get a lot more dollars because that's just what they do.
But I think at some point, yeah.
Yeah
But at some point, if you don't believe that you can deal with that, and that's just the reality the way it is, then we're just kind of stuck.
So I appreciate your nuanced answer.
Sorry to put you on the spot there, but I appreciate it.
we have to talk about these things.
Otherwise, I don't think we can ever, you know, fix them.
I do think that most people don't.
We like to watch them on TV.
We like to see it in movies.
And for a lot of folks who come into contact with the system for the first time, and you know, sure, we have many frequent flyers at the public defender's office.
That is true.
But we also have folks who have never touched the system.
And
they are often shocked.
As I said at the beginning of this, they're shocked that a misdemeanor can take a year or two.
They're shocked when we tell them the range of punishment.
Every time I say, well, it could be two to 20 years in prison, and people are just like, my God, because it's a shocking number.
um And then we have to talk them back and be like, well, you're probably going to be offered diversion.
It's not, but like I have to inform them of the range of punishment and.
So yeah, think folks who have not touched the system don't have a very clear comprehension of what it actually looks like on a day to day.
And a lot of our job is just unfortunately letting them know like this is the real world.
It doesn't look like TV, it doesn't look like the movies.
This is the pace at which it moves, the consequences you could be dealing with.
Yeah.
So let's pretend for a second that I'm a fairy with a magic wand.
If you could change one thing, not fix everything, not fix everything, but you get unfettered, the unlimited ability to change one specific thing about how public defense is
either funded or structured in Texas, what would it be?
Ooh, that's a tough question.
Funded or structured?
I mean, I guess to me they're kind of the one and the same.
I think it would just be like, us as much money as possible.
And I say, because the more money we have, the more attorneys we can hire, the more social workers we can hire.
And I know at the beginning of this, said I was gonna talk about Philly and this might be a good opportunity.
So the Philly Public Defender's Office has been around for 50 years.
the, it's called the Defender Service of Philadelphia.
They take upwards of 70 % of all cases in Philadelphia because that's how many folks qualify for the attorney up there.
So seven out of 10 cases, not just, you know, qualified, just seven out of 10 cases are going to the affiliate public defender's office.
They have 500 people on staff.
They have 300 attorneys on staff.
They do horizontal representation, which is where you represent a person at different stages of their case, which is not fun for the client, but there's no way to handle that
many cases in a vertical form.
Once you get to more serious level felonies, it becomes vertical, but for misdemeanors, it's horizontal.
And I say that because they also have social services.
And because they're taking seven out of 10 cases and they're very well funded and they're having their own fights about salaries and, you know, making sure that they make parity.
They're a nonprofit.
They're not technically a county or government office, which brings its own challenges and it's on for freedoms.
But, you know, they're able to provide a lot more connections and services to clients and a lot more clients because they are so big.
And so I think if for Texas, if you were to fund public defense completely, fully to be able to provide that holistic model everywhere, um then that would ultimately change the
structure to the other uh part of your question.
But it would be an office where somebody can come in and they can get clothing that has been donated, which we have in our office for our clients.
They can get some water and a snack because that might be what they're just dealing with today.
They can get connections to mental health services.
They can get connections to healthcare.
That doesn't mean it's gonna happen right there in the office, but they can get a resource list of places that they can go to.
But again, that might actually address the root cause and allow people to move away from the system rather than get trapped in it.
And I think, unfortunately, that just costs money.
You need to get people who are experienced who are in there.
And so I think the more money we have, the more folks we can help.
So yeah, Travis County pay us.
The t-shirt we made for our action that says TCPDL fair pay now.
And we came up with it, don't know, a year or so ago and it'd be shocking how often we're like, yep, no, this slogan works.
Still.
it's like, yep, still works, still works.
So yeah, I mean, I do think the pay discrepancy as you guys talked about a lot, it's shocking to hear the numbers that you were citing.
I wasn't even aware of those.
But it tells you, we're talking about somebody with an army and somebody with a peace shooter.
And all the things that go along with that beyond just the criminal defense.
So if you were to pour that much money into it, then.
I think you would find that the outcomes are what people want.
People just have to get over the idea of, we're paying for people who allegedly committed crimes to get all these services.
And it's like, well, what do you want?
Like, do you want the outcome or do you just want to feel good about the process?
I think for a lot of people, it's feel good about the process, which means not providing things.
But if they really care about the outcome, they don't want these things to happen again, well, then this is what it's gonna take.
Yeah, there's that presumption of guilt coming back in instead of presumption of innocence, right?
And I've been trying to rack my brain to think of any like perverse incentives that a public defender would have.
It's really not anything that I can think of that's like, there's no incentive for you to try and get somebody off.
Like if he's a dangerous person, you know, or did a repeat offender or whatever, like, you know, yes, you're to represent them and you're going to make sure that there's still not
overreach, but you don't have the incentive to try and manipulate things or lie to the judges because you're going to be back in front of those same judges again.
There's really nothing from your side that I think would happen.
There's a bad outcome of giving public defenders more resources.
there anything that we...
Go ahead, sorry.
was going say that to that point, one of the, you know, as I mentioned, I worked private defense for two years and I was working under a more senior attorney.
And so I did not have to deal a lot with the business part of it, but I saw it, you know, I had to take payments.
had to remind people about payments and that is it's awkward and it's painful and it feels
just crappy, every time you have to go judge, I have to withdraw from this case, why?
Well, the person didn't pay us.
And like, I get it, you're a practitioner, you're providing a service, you have the right to do that.
But when I can, as a public defender, I don't have to worry about that.
All I have to worry about is giving my 100 % to every client.
I don't have to worry about if they didn't make a payment.
And I feel like that makes the...
the attorney-client relationship that much stronger because there is no ulterior motive.
It's just, I want to get the best outcome for you.
And you're a true lifeline to these clients, a lot of your clients.
mean, they don't have anybody else on their side, so.
We try to be.
Well, in addition to a social worker and a civil action specialist as well, if someone is listening to this, say somebody from Travis County comes across our podcast.
I'm not sure why, but hey, I have friends in Buda and several other places down around you.
if someone in rural Texas County that doesn't have a public defender's office or someone in Travis County, if they don't have any sort of resource at all.
What do you want them to know?
And I want to frame that from a, what can they do?
Can they volunteer?
Is there something they can actually do besides, yeah, go vote.
Oh yeah, we get it, vote.
We've been all screaming it time and time again in Texas.
think Texas has like a 17 % voting rate in non-major elections.
So what can somebody who cares about these sorts of things and cares about the outcomes actively do in their own community or in their own county to?
make for a better system.
Um, I would say, so if you're in Travis County, would say donating clothing or food to our office is very helpful.
you know, clients come in daily for that kind of thing and they need it.
now if you're in a smaller County that doesn't have a public defender's office and you're, you're trying to get involved.
honestly, it sounds simple, but court watch, go to court, sit there and watch what's happening.
You may not realize it.
But when a civilian comes in or a regular citizen and sits down and watches that judge or those prosecutors, sit up straighter.
Everything changes because now they know the eyeballs are on them.
And all of a sudden people are getting more reasonable outcomes because somebody's watching.
look, the courts are open.
They're meant to be public.
The public often does not avail themselves of that right.
And it is the public's right.
And I really wish more people would.
because I think that when people know that they're being watched, they tend to be on their best behavior.
And I've seen a lot of judges when they know they're not being watched, they get in their power trippy head and they do things that they would never do in front of a voter.
So yeah, sure, go out and vote, absolutely.
But if not, then just go sit in court, just watch it.
And it's highly entertaining.
My job is never boring.
And so for average people,
If it's not volunteering somewhere or donating somewhere, I would just go and watch.
Because I think that, believe it or not, that impact, it's real and it's immediate.
Yeah, we did.
We did mention uh actually on last week's episode, you can actually if you're looking for a group and you're out there and you're listening to this and you're like, how do I how do
I do that?
Yes, you could just show up.
You can also check out Courtwatch.org.
They have some training videos and some live live information about exactly how you can do that.
But their byline is injustice happens in empty courtrooms and doesn't have to be this way.
So I think that's a that's a really good.
Good recommendation there and you can check that out at I said, CourtWatch.org.
Let's see, here's kind of a big one.
Why do you keep doing this?
Why do you show up to work every day and why do you still do it?
I don't know, I love it.
I I know that's a, I've always, know, when I discovered public defense, it was a law school panel discussion.
And I believe it was by, there was a variety of attorneys on the panel and I went home and I went, oh, you know, this is something that I think I knew about, but I didn't really
know that.
And I think it was the Bronx defenders that had kind of a brochure or a pamphlet online.
And it was like, how do you know if you want to be a public defender?
And it asks a series of questions.
And one of them was like, you just, you know, you really like sticking it to the man.
And I was like, yep, that sounds like me.
And, know, look, I think, I think this is a whole other conversation, but a lot of time, I don't believe in a purity test for becoming a public defender.
think a lot of people get into this work for a lot of different reasons.
And I think it can be a,
a variety of reasons.
I think that there are going to be folks who have a much stronger sense of the injustice that our clients face.
And that, I feel like every year I do this, I get a stronger and stronger sense of the injustice our clients face.
And then there are those of us who have, you know, a little bit of like, we just enjoy sticking it to the man.
Others, we just enjoy going to court.
We enjoy the oral advocacy compared to a written advocacy.
So there's a lot of different reasons that I do it every day.
But ultimately, I think I view myself as a frontline defender of the public.
I I know it's kind of oversimplification, but for folks who can't defend themselves and folks who this system, and I don't call it a criminal justice system, because I think
oftentimes justice doesn't exist in it.
It's a criminal penal system, in my opinion,
That system is oppressing them, it's keeping them down, it's labeling them in ways that will follow them around for the rest of their lives, is making it so that they can't get a
job, they can't get housing, they don't qualify for this program, they don't qualify for those services.
We are there to try to make sure that those resources and those opportunities are, or could possibly still be accessible to them in the future.
So, yeah.
I know, just, feel like we're on the front line trying to keep this system from keeping people down.
And that's what gets me up every day.
You know, it's not just that.
It's also fun in many ways.
It's great to cross examine a police officer and catch them in a lie.
You know, that's one of the best things.
The two best words in the English language, in my opinion, are not guilty.
But.
So it's a variety of reasons that I get up every day to do it, but ultimately all of that feeds into we're protecting people from a system that, in my opinion, was designed to
oppress them.
ah You heard it there, Will, did you hear that?
Designed to oppress.
If not originally, it has been manipulated to that degree.
The incentive is yeah, once they're in trenched interests, they have to protect themselves and that's what they're doing, right?
Yeah, I think so.
So, well, Seth, it, I was gonna ask Seth, are there any questions you wanted us to ask that we haven't asked or anything you'd like to share?
I mean, I guess I can talk a little bit about the Dallas Public Defender's Office that I, you know, I think so twice I have applied to work at the Dallas Public Defender's Office.
It's been years since I applied, but prior to moving to Texas and taking the job in Austin, I wanted to work there.
My partner, she's from that area and so family is up there.
But what I had learned and it may be different now, but what I learned was that they have an expectation, not like a
unwritten expectation, like it is their policy that if you're a misdemeanor attorney, you're taking 100 misdemeanors a month.
A month, that's three new ones a day.
You cannot possibly do your job if you're taking that many cases.
You just can't, not correctly, right?
There's been too many instances when I have watched body camera footage and you go, yeah, okay, all right.
Oh, wait a minute, they left out that they didn't Mirandize this person.
it wasn't in the offense report.
They left out that that blinker was working when they pulled them over.
And the only, I tell all the people I supervise, I'm like, you have to watch it all because it's the five minutes you don't that makes the case.
And so if you're taking a hundred cases a month, I don't know how you possibly get through all of those cases and do a proper job.
And I think they had some crazy statistic like 50,
50 felonies or something, maybe 30 felonies a month, which is crazy for felonies.
So, I mean, there are examples that you guys have talked about.
The cliche is a cliche for a reason.
I got lucky, I worked in two offices that were very well resourced, different models.
And I will say, while there's a threat of crushing caseloads, it has not yet appeared, at least not here, but just up the road in Dallas.
Like they've been living with that for decades.
Some of it by design.
um some of it not.
they are, from the people I know who have worked there, they got out as soon as they could because it is every bit the cliche that we have come to think about.
People who are really good attorneys when they get here, but couldn't be when they were up there because they had unrealistic expectations of how many cases they were gonna take.
Your mileage may vary depending on which PD office you're part of.
Absolutely, and we're trying to build an office here for the long haul.
We have had people leave, to Joshua's point.
We've had people go to Harris County.
We've had people um go to the Office of First Defense, which for clarification, the Office of First Defense is essentially, because of the size of our office, we can't staff all of
CAFA, all of Council at First Appearance, the Magistration.
And so somebody does, somebody has to, it can't be that some people don't get representation and only the folks who end up with the public defenders do.
So what the office of first defense is, is they represent folks at CAFA who are not represented by the public defender's office or the court appointed attorneys.
And then what ends up happening is those folks end up going to other court appointed attorneys.
So they get an attorney, it's just not a public defender.
And so we've had a few folks go there.
And that could be life circumstances.
Sometimes we've got kids who just had, or we have people who just had kids.
And so it's a little bit of an easier work-life balance because you don't actively represent the case.
You're just representing that magistration.
So yeah, we definitely lost folks and we're always fighting for fair pay because it's always an issue.
Yeah, I mean, we're going to continue fighting for that fair pay.
But we are building an office for the long term.
We have been able to keep a lot of really great people.
And the way we are assigning and training folks, think, will lend itself to that.
Our hope is that in five, 10 years, we have a core of folks who have been here for very long and can take any kind of case.
Yeah.
Have you considered unionization?
We have a union in Texas.
Many of us are a part of it.
Sorry, Texas in Travis County.
The building is literally across the street.
It's the AFSCME is the union.
We've had talks of like, are they really serving the PDs as well as they could be?
I think there's a lot of issues when it comes to the union here because.
I think that when you don't have, as Will knows, having gone to law school here, and I, Joshua, I don't know if you spent any significant time in Austin, but it's a blue island
in a sea of red.
And while that's fun in a lot of ways, it means it's a one-party city in a lot of ways.
And when it's a one-party city, you don't get competition, you don't get people really needing to stake their positions on things.
And so it's not very clear often.
um People aren't advocating, in my opinion, as much as they should be.
Take, for example, the most recent budget funding last fiscal year.
There was a debate over whether or not they should do a across the board, a COLA, or they should adjust people based on what the market demands.
And I think you cited a statistic that like 75 %
I don't know, was it our office or attorneys generally are underpaid, but we pull
within your office.
Yeah, we pulled every employee in the public defender's office, the district attorney's office, the county attorney's office.
We pulled their salaries because it's all PIAable.
we looked at what the county said the medium average salary should be.
Something like 85 % of people were paid below market.
And it's like, well, if 85 % are paid below market, yeah, it's a county-wide problem, sure.
And the union advocated for a COLA, which got everybody 3%, which is great.
But when you did the math, it meant $2 million less was going towards employees.
And I'm just like, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
your job is to advocate for employees, why are you advocating for the, and there were like three options, why are you advocating for the one that gets employees less money?
And it was because fundamentally they had issues with like, well, but this one, everybody gets 2%, but then some people only get 1%.
It's like, well, yes, but those are the folks who are already close to what their market rate is.
So there were a lot of those kind of internal like questions and politics and like positions and.
In my opinion, because it's just a one party city or one party county, nobody really pushes them one way the other.
And that's the outcome.
So do we think about unionizing?
We've talked about it.
The idea of it, like, is there a way?
But it's still Texas, right?
Unions just don't have a lot of power.
They don't hold a lot of sway here.
Yeah, I live in I live in Dallas for 10 years.
So I'm more more familiar with the legal system there in Dallas specifically, but I mean, Texas as a whole.
I currently live in Oklahoma now in the Austin of Oklahoma.
But I after living here, didn't feel like the Austin of Oklahoma.
And so I asked him when sometime was like they described this as the Austin of Oklahoma.
And they said, yeah, but it's still the Oklahoma of the United States.
And so we don't necessarily have that problem, those same problems uh here in Norman, which is where OU is, we don't have that problem here in Norman.
There's plenty of pushback on whatever side of the issue that you're on.
But I can definitely understand that.
I I will say that I sometimes wish I lived in a predominantly blue city, but that's just not in the cards for now.
We'll see what the future holds.
Seth, I really wanna thank you very much for taking the time to be here with us, for answering our questions and giving us a lot of insight.
I really hope that our listeners enjoyed it.
I hope you had a good time hanging out with us today.
I certainly did, and hearing your perspectives and your viewpoints.
Do you have any questions for us or any other comments as we come to a close?
No, I enjoyed the episode I listened to.
You all are great.
I learned things.
Let me just say that.
I learned a lot listening to it.
This is the field I'm in.
So I appreciate the depth with which you all research and prepare.
It's certainly impressive.
Yeah, just keep doing what you're doing.
Excellent, well I appreciate that.
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Until next time, I appreciate you being here, Seth.
Will, again, as always, thank you so much for hanging out and for doing this show.
We will see you guys next week and Seth, we will see you again soon.
Sounds good.
Take care everyone.
Always a pleasure.
Bye.