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Washington State Office of Public Defense |
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Criminal Trial Defense Services | |||
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The Washington State Office of Public Defense has received funding for trial level public defense services due to the efforts of the Court Funding Task Force, the Washington Sate Bar Association’s Committee on Public Defense and many other supporters of court improvement and public defense. The Task Force’s report “Justice in Jeopardy” was the result of a two-year effort to identify the critical issues in court funding and to recommend ways to remedy the problems. The Task Force noted, “Washington’s trial courts, consisting of more than 400 judges, adjudicate more than 2.3 million cases each year. Millions of lives are affected by trial court rulings on criminal, civil and family law cases. For a branch of government that directly impacts the lives of citizens every day, funding of our equal but separate branch of government is shockingly low." In March 2006 the Legislature appropriated over $3 million to fund the Indigent Defense Services legislation in House Bill 1542 (RCW 10.101). Counties and cities applied to OPD for a portion of these funds to improve their local public defense systems and OPD distributed money to 38 counties and 5 cities. In March of 2007, the Legislature appropriated an additional $6 million to fund indigent defense in 2008 and 2009. These funds will be distributed by OPD through an application process as described in RCW 10.101.050.
In addition OPD will continue to provide the following trial level public defense services: For further information please contact:
Kathy Kuriyama, Public
Defense Services Manager |
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Copyright © 2005 Washington State Office of Public Defense. All rights reserved |
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