A measure to create a statewide office to assist under-resourced public defenders stalled in the Illinois General Assembly this spring, but the bill’s backers say they will try again when the legislature reconvenes in the fall.
“We are going to try to filter as many new ideas or as many new perspectives through the committee process as possible so that we have a really good bill when it’s all said and done,” state Rep. Dave Vella, a Rockford Democrat and former Winnebago County assistant public defender, said Monday.
Vella filed a bill last month aimed at addressing the lack of public defense resources in rural areas, many of which don’t have public defender’s offices, and resolving disparities in resources provided to county prosecutors and public defenders. In Cook County’s 2024 budget, for example, the public defender’s office got about $102 million while about $205 million was set aside for the state’s attorney’s office.
One major issue remains funding, Vella acknowledged. The $53.1 billion state budget that awaits Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signature appropriates $10 million to the state Supreme Court for county public defenders, the same as in the current budget. Advocates say far more is needed for a statewide public defender office to be effective..
Champaign County Public Defender Elisabeth Pollock said the state’s public defenders have been meeting for months about what a new statewide office should look like and agreed that $10 million isn’t enough for a statewide office to succeed.
“There has really been kind of a historical underinvestment in the public defense sector, in general,” Pollock said.
Vella’s bill was an offshoot of legislation filed in April by Senate President Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat. Public defenders did not support that bill because it was an initiative of the Illinois Supreme Court, raising concerns about whether the statewide public defender’s office would be free of interference from the judiciary.
Vella said his bill aims to address that concern by taking away the power of chief county judges to choose public defenders, as they do in most Illinois counties — in Cook County the board president appoints the public defender — “because obviously the whole point of this thing is to give autonomy to the public defenders.”
“We are committed to this. I think it’s a very important investment in the state,” Harmon said May 26 moments after the Senate adjourned for the spring. “That said, when you’re trying to help someone and they tell you you’re not helping them the right way, it makes me think maybe we step back and work even more closely with our public defenders over the summer to see what we can do better.”
The state Supreme Court’s administrative office for Illinois courts said in a statement on its website that it supports any outcome that ensures “every indigent defendant across our state has access to effective assistance of counsel and every public defender has the resources needed” to fulfill the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which mandates a defendant’s right to counsel.
Under Vella’s legislation, a statewide public defender would be nominated by a group “created by and composed of” public defenders in the state. The state Supreme Court would then approve a nominated candidate to a two-year term by majority vote.
When the term is up, a newly-formed state public defender commission composed of 11 members would select a state public defender for a six-year term. The governor would select four of the commission members, the state Supreme Court would choose three and the four state legislative leaders, two from each party, would each get one.
Commission members would be required to have experience defending indigent clients, and cannot have been paid as a judge, elected official, prosecutor, judicial officer or police official within two years of joining the commission.
The legislation would also create a process for the statewide public defender office to nominate candidates for the county-level public defender positions, and the new commission would make the appointments.
DuPage County Public Defender Jeff York believes the new legislation alleviates “a lot of the concerns” that he and other public defenders had compared to the initial legislation but he feels a term-limit provision in Vella’s bill for certain county public defenders needs further discussion.
“My fear is that the decisions that you would make running an office, you’re not looking at the long term. You’re like, ‘well, I only have a year left,’” said York. “The decisions you make may not be best for the office and ultimately not as good for the clients.”
The statewide public defender’s office would also provide training to county-level public defenders and support “with the assistance of attorneys, expert witnesses, investigators, administrative staff, and social service staff” and “maintain a panel” of private attorneys to represent indigent clients, according to the bill.
The legislation would allow any two counties within the same judicial circuit to combine public defender’s offices. Now, in certain situations, two adjoining counties can share a public defender.
Advocates have pointed to a report from the Sixth Amendment Center, which was commissioned a few years ago by the state Supreme Court, which said that as of 2021, Illinois was among just seven states that don’t have a state commission, state agency or state officer with oversight of trial-level public defense services in adult criminal cases.
The report, which focused on nine counties, noted the state had no oversight structure to assess whether each county had a sufficient number of lawyers with the appropriate training and resources to provide effective counsel at every stage of an indigent client’s case.
Vella said a measure such as the one he’s sponsoring “is long overdue.”
“All this really does is it puts the public defenders at an even keel with the state’s attorneys, which is the whole point of the process,” said Vella. “Public defenders are at an extreme disadvantage and if we don’t want people wrongly convicted, we need to give them as much as we can.”
