Defendants in Seattle court going weeks without receiving an attorney

Last October, a man dressed in wizard robes allegedly pulled a knife on someone in the University District and threatened to cut his throat. He was arrested and booked into jail, where, had all gone according to plan, he should have been assigned an attorney from the King County Department of Public Defense.

But for two weeks after his arraignment, he sat in jail and no lawyer ever showed up. Not until his pretrial hearing did the judge, defense and prosecution realize he lacked representation. The breakdown scrambled his case, sowing confusion and spurring Judge Damon Shadid to order his release.

The case is one of at least 15 identified by public defenders over the last year in which a defendant in Seattle Municipal Court went weeks without being assigned an attorney, emails and records show. That’s far longer than is policy at the Department of Public Defense and raises questions about the constitutional rights of people charged with a crime. The number is likely higher: The tally was collected by way of anecdotes reported to department leadership, when a front-line attorney would notice someone in court without a lawyer.

The breakdown has caused intense frustration within the city’s legal system. It’s policy at the Department of Public Defense for lawyers to visit their new clients within a day of their arraignment to plan out a strategy and possibly negotiate their release.

Katie Hurley, special counsel for criminal policy and practice at the department, said people arrested on misdemeanor crimes are almost certainly spending longer in jail than they would have when they’re given a lawyer quickly enough.

“All the things that we do between court hearings, that person wasn’t able to do,” Hurley said.

The city of Seattle only handles misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor cases, which are routed through Seattle Municipal Court and have a maximum sentence of 364 days. The King County Department of Public Defense contracts with Seattle to provide legal representation to those people arrested on misdemeanor charges.

As part of that contract, it’s up to Seattle Municipal Court staff to forward cases of people needing representation to the department.

A spokesperson for Seattle Municipal Court, Gary Ireland, acknowledged there were times when a defendant was deemed eligible for public defense but the court either did not make or delayed making the referral to the Department of Public Defense.

“It appears some of the issues were due to a data entry error by staff and others related to a business process issue on when the referral was made,” he said.

City Attorney Ann Davison’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

The issue first surfaced about a year ago, as the public defense leadership team started hearing from staff about cases coming up on the court docket but the defendants not having representation. The majority were properly assigned, but enough were not that Hurley and others started raising concerns.

The issue continued to crop up and in recent months, the urgency from the public defense department ratcheted up. In emails to court staff last month, Hurley identified multiple people who’d been in jail for weeks without a lawyer.

“I’m exceedingly concerned that we are not receiving these referrals for case assignments,” she said.

Ireland said the court changed its processes on March 17, assigning records staff to take over entering codes for referrals into the city’s new case management system.

But in the weeks since, Hurley said they found at least one more person who still has not been assigned an attorney. On March 25, a woman was clearly in a mental health crisis — her head bleeding, running into the street, talking to herself. Police determined she was a threat to herself — one benchmark for involuntary commitment to a hospital — and tried to corral her, but she kicked one of them in the process, so rather than being sent to Harborview Medical Center, she was arrested and taken to jail.

She was released on the condition that she return to her next hearing and stay in touch with her attorney. But she was never assigned an attorney.

“It seems very likely to me … that she will not come to court and a warrant will be issued for her on a case that should never have been in the system to begin with,” Hurley said, “and if I had been assigned that case, I would have been meeting with the prosecutor right away to try to get them to dismiss the case.”

Ireland disputed that her case fit into the same bucket as the other issues, saying she was released before she could meet with a court screener and was provided contact information for the Department of Public Defense. Still, public defense lawyers say it’s part of a broader issue of communication between their department and the court.

The lack of referrals is another piece in what’s been a frustrating administrative year in Seattle’s court system, originating with the rollout of a new, $54 million case management system a year ago.

In 2016, the Seattle City Council gave the green light and funds to start planning out the replacement system. The goal was to make it more accessible and streamline communication among public defenders, prosecutors, the court and police.

The system was originally estimated to cost $37 million and go live in 2021. But the project turned out to be substantially more complicated than previously thought and it was not rolled out until 2024, at a cost of $54 million.

The initial rollout was bumpy, with both defense attorneys and prosecutors complaining about losing access to case files and being forced to rely on pen and paper.

Many of the processes have since smoothed out, but defense attorneys suspect it’s contributing to the breakdown in referrals.

“It’s really important for attorneys to be assigned immediately so that they can begin the important work of working on the case, identifying equity issues, identifying supports, identifying release options,” said Hurley. “And when that doesn’t happen, you see people staying in custody longer. You see more warrants. You see people not getting the really important legal services that they need.”