At a July meeting in Columbus, Ohio Public Defender Commission Chair William Creedon put the question plainly: “Do we do a wholesale change of the way indigent defense is delivered in Ohio?”
The answer could reshape how thousands of low-income defendants get a lawyer — how the state guarantees its constitutional promise of adequate criminal defense.
Public outcry in Cuyahoga County last year jump-started an exhaustive debate over Ohio’s indigent defense standards. An investigation by The Marshall Project – Cleveland found juvenile court judges selectively assigning cases to unqualified defense attorneys. The commission, at the time, was overdue for a review of the statewide rules for reimbursing counties that paid private attorneys to take public defense cases…