The Houston Chronicle reports, "Report: Public defender system showing positive results," by Brian Rogers.
Harris County's recently created public defender system is seeing positive results, including an uptick in dismissed cases for Houston's mentally ill, according to a report released Tuesday by the Council of State Governments.
"It says we provide a lot of value to the system," Alex Bunin, the county's chief public defender, said of the results.
Those results include dismissal rates that are five times higher for mentally ill misdemeanor suspects than similar defendants with appointed attorneys.
The office, which began in 2011 with a state grant funding the first four years, handles about 6 percent of the county's indigent trial-level cases. The rest of the indigent cases are handled by private attorneys appointed by one of the county's 40 criminal court judges.
In general, the report found that the public defender's office does more investigation, which leads to better results in court, advocates for the defense bar in community issues and offers free training, mentoring and advice that was not available before.
Those courtroom results include a greater proportion of dismissals, deferred sentences and acquittals. The report also pointed out that the office sees a smaller proportion of "guilty" verdicts than appointed lawyers. Overall, the public defender office secured acquittals at three times the rate of appointed or hired attorneys, according to the report.
The Council of State Governments report on the Harris County PD office is available in Adobe .pdf format.
Earlier coverage of the Harris County office begins at the link. Related posts are in the indigent defense category index.
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