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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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They point out that their budget is 60% of that of the District Attorney's Office, which to me signals their complaint is likely justified.

This doesn't necessarily seem like a huge red flag depending on what percentage of defendants retain private counsel, and the inherently asymmetric system where the prosecution bears the burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt. It makes sense that it costs more in terms of man-hours to build cases than to poke holes in them.

Also, the prosecution becomes involved with cases much earlier than a PD, at least that is my understanding from watching The Wire.

By the time the case actually goes to trial, the prosecution already has established what they believe to be a winnable case.

On the other hand, technological evidence will probably make the DAs job much easier in many cases. If a guy is caught committing a felony on video, I could imagine that the prosecution may actually have less of a workload than the PD. Watch the video, notice it will convince a jury, charge him. On the other hand, the PD will still have to talk with the defendant a few times, try to persuade him to take a deal and so on.

At the end of the day, the PD are funded through taxpayer money, so they owe the public an account of how they spend their time. How many hours did they spend on which case. Did they go after likely leads, or go on every wild goose chase their client set them on? These are facts which could be established from statistics.

There is a lot of a difference between "no PD can meet the accused because they are overworked" and "actually they were busy trying to investigate if Elvis was alive and had committed the crime because that is what their client suggested". From the outside, it is hard to say which one it is.

That's not how it works, though. Law Enforcement & crime labs do the lion's share of building the case, and they have their own budgets. So it's more like LE + crime lab + prosecutors (all with their own budgets) vs the public defender. Plus, when someone from the crime lab testifies, that's part of their routine pay. The defense getting an expert to testify to challenge something from the crime lab require expert fees that come from the PD budget.

There is also the asymmetry where the DA can dump bad cases or plead them down to make them go away (and save time/money in doing so). The defense doesn't have that power. If it's a case where the client is going to get convicted after 20 minutes of jury deliberations at trial, the defense can't make the case go away if the client chooses to go to trial. Instead, it's going to be the time/money/effort of a trial even if it's an utterly foregone conclusion.

The DA's office still has to review cases and figure out which ones are worth charging, go through the evidence for potentially exclupatory evidence that they are required to disclose, coordinate with law enforcement on building the case in a legally compliant way, etc. They can start putting in hours on a case long before the defense attorney even gets retained.

The plea bargain issue goes both ways I think. If a public defender has a case that they know is a lost cause, they will do their best to convince their client that taking a plea is in their best interest. Every case that the prosecution closes with a plea is also a case that the PD doesn't have to take to trial.

Experts are a fair point though, if that's coming out of the PD budget that is a bit unfair.

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