DA Gunnels says Deschutes County is ‘close to the edge’ of crisis amid state’s public defender shortage

(Update: Adding video, comments from ACLU and Deschutes County DA)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ)-- The state of Oregon has been battling a worsening public defender shortage, and now it's at a tipping point, many involved believe. Over 2,000 people facing criminal charges in Oregon are without a public defender, due to not being able to afford one, and the state not having enough public defenders to cover the need.

"The way that the system works is that if somebody is accused of a crime, they have a constitutional right to be represented by an attorney and if they can't afford an attorney, the court will appoint an attorney for them." Deschutes County DA Steve Gunnels explained Wednesday, "If you don't have an attorney to appoint, then the criminal case against the person cannot move forward in the system."

As a result, those awaiting trial are either held in custody for longer than necessary, or released. For many of those who work as public defenders, the workload and hours are too much, due to the shortage.

Gunnels says the situation locally is not as bad at this point as the Portland area.

"It hasn't reached the point where I would call it a crisis. But,you know, we're we're always pretty close to the edge of that," he told NewsChannel 21.

A recent lawsuit in Washington County alleged that defendants' constitutional rights are being violated, by being withheld a public defender. The federal judge overseeing the case ruled that defendants must be released after not having a lawyer for 10 days.

The state has now allocated $100 million to hire more attorneys.

Sandy Chung, executive director of ACLU Oregon, said, "One of our fundamental values as a country is that the criminal legal system has to be fair, and our courts have to be fair. And there isn't fairness if someone doesn't have a lawyer who knows how to navigate the system."

According to the Bureau of Judicial Statistics, nine in 10 people facing federal crimes cannot afford attorneys.

How to solve the problem?

Gunnels said, "We need to create incentives so that people who graduate from law school want to go into that line of work, to be public defenders, to represent indigent defendants, so that there are enough attorneys to represent the people who are charged with crimes."

The ACLU's Chung says the work environment for public defenders is toxic, stating women and people of color especially get treated differently by judges and other attorneys, due to the nature of their jobs

"A fundamental question that Oregonians need to ask is, what are we getting back from the taxpayer money that we're putting into the system?" Chung said.