Washington faces a safety crisis if the state government doesn’t provide new funding for criminal defense, public defense experts are warning.
The request for fresh funding, brought by public defense leaders at the annual Defender Initiative Conference on Friday, comes as a host of other issues, including attorney burnout and new technology, strain the state’s justice system. But the path to finding a solution may not be a simple one.
“We have a challenging situation,” said Robert C. Boruchowitz, director of the Defender Initiative at the Seattle University School of Law. While Washington has some of the best public defense in the country, there are “threats to the quality of that representation and major inequalities across the state.”
Under the U.S. Constitution, the right to counsel in criminal cases applies regardless of a defendant’s ability to pay. Without public defenders, prosecutions stall, defendants don’t receive proper defense, and sometimes charges are dismissed altogether if counsel is not appointed.
Public defense experts say the key to shoring up the criminal justice system is more funding from the state so the costs don’t swamp smaller counties abiding by new caseload standards.
Boruchowitz said public defenders struggled with heavy workloads under outdated case-limit standards. New standards, codified by the state Supreme Court in 2025, limit each defense attorney to 47 felony cases or 120 misdemeanor cases annually, a change that will be rolled out over the next several years. The previous standard was 150 felonies or 400 misdemeanors per year.
After the new standards were adopted, some state lawmakers and stakeholders expressed concerns that they would increase the number of attorneys needed in many counties. Public defenders say the decrease in workloads is needed to attract and retain public defenders as the job tends to lead to burnout.
“Any person facing criminal charges has a constitutional right to a lawyer, and that lawyer must provide effective, ethical, quality representation, and this takes time,” said Toby Marshall, founding member of Terrell Marshall Law Group, a public interest law firm. “If a lawyer has too many cases, the lawyer cannot do a good job on any of them.”
Boruchowitz noted too that technology such as police body cameras adds to the amount of time a public defender works on a case. If five officers are at the same scene, for example, the defense would have to review all five officers’ footage for one case.
Others close to Washington’s criminal justice system have different ideas on how to approach the looming crisis.
Yakima County Prosecutor Joe Brusic told The Seattle Times that while prosecutors agree the state funding public defense is good, the state also needs to provide more money for the system as a whole — including counties and prosecutors.
“We’re all part of the criminal justice system, and the system needs to be protected — not just public defenders,” he said.
Brusic noted that prosecutors’ offices also face an attorney shortage.
“Without those attorneys, and without attorneys applying for those respective positions, it’s very hard to prosecute and it’s very hard to provide public defense,” he added.
While the state increased the annual contribution for public defense services from $5.3 million to $13.6 million in 2025, that money is not distributed evenly among counties, meaning smaller counties end up with less resources for public defense services as they typically have less complex cases and fewer defendants than bigger counties.
According to Marshall, cities and counties pay about 94%, or more than $220 million per year, to fund trial-level indigent defense services. The state pays about 6%.
Democratic lawmakers proposed funding from the state’s “millionaires tax” this year to shore up public defense services, but those dedicated dollars were stripped from the bill in the last days of the legislative session.
The state may soon have no choice but to address the deepening public defense crisis.
Due to existing public defender shortages in Yakima County, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington filed a lawsuit in 2024 because it said the county is “unable to give constitutionally guaranteed counsel to people charged with crimes.” The ACLU noted that the shortage has left people waiting in jail because there are no attorneys to assign to cases.
In January, the state Supreme Court declined to review a 2025 appeals court ruling that found Washington counties have legal standing to sue the state for more public defense funding.
A third case, Blumhorst v. Spokane County, is also moving through the courts. Spokane County was sued by defense attorneys earlier this year after county commissioners adopted their own, much higher caseload standards.
Public defense funding structures by state vary widely, but Washington is among the states where local governments carry most of the financial burden. More than two-thirds of the states in the country rely on local government funding.
It is unclear if lawmakers will increase funding for public defense during the next legislative session, especially as the state’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall persists. If counties begin to sue for more public defense funding, it could force the state’s hand.
“We have two ways that we can go,” said Marshall. “One is to ensure public safety by providing public defense, the other is to ensure we lack public safety by dismissing cases and releasing people from jail, because there is no public defender available for them.”
