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Public defenders brief senators: caseloads, digital evidence and staffing top concerns
Summary
The Board of Public Defense described workload pressures, technological demands and the need to sustain recent salary parity with prosecutors. The board seeks ongoing funding to maintain salary gains and to reduce caseloads over two years.
Bill Ward, State Public Defender, and Kevin Keiser, Chief Administrator for the Board of Public Defense, presented to the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on Jan. 22 about workload, staffing and budget needs for the state’s public defense system.
Keiser said the Board of Public Defense provides constitutionally and statutorily mandated criminal‑defense services in every county courthouse and appellate court in Minnesota. He described a roughly $164,000,000 annual budget, with about 90% devoted to personnel, and noted the system handled roughly 130,000 trial‑level matters and about 36,100 direct appeals in the most recent reporting period.
Keiser told the committee that public defenders are required to accept all assigned cases. "We are mandated to take whatever cases come down the pipe," he said, describing that model as limiting the agency’s ability to triage workload. He outlined changes since the last biennium: salary adjustments that narrowed the gap with prosecutors, a reduction in resignation rates from about 15% to approximately 5–6% in some units, and an increase in applicant pools by about one‑third. Keiser said those investments helped stabilize staffing but must be maintained to avoid renewed turnover.
Keiser and Ward highlighted growing demands on defenders: large volumes of audio and video evidence (measured in hundreds of terabytes), expanded forensic and scientific evidence, and more clients with co‑occurring mental‑health, chemical‑dependency and traumatic‑brain‑injury needs. Keiser said the office’s internal caseload metric currently averages about 4.5 hours per case unit and that state caseload standards date from 1991; the office is developing an updated state standard in the wake of national RAND findings.
The board’s budget request presented to the committee focuses on two priorities: sustain recent compensation improvements to preserve parity with prosecuting agencies, and fund workload reductions (a stated goal to reduce caseloads by about 15% over two years). Committee members praised public defenders’ work and acknowledged the operational pressures in courthouses; the hearing was informational and produced no committee vote.
Ending: The board said it will continue to provide detailed budget estimates to the legislature; no appropriation action occurred at this meeting.
