Council 04-28-2026 [43:07-48:17]

Public defender is responsive in its nature. We just respond to what's out there. Turning page seven, the facts about the tasks. This is one that every year we go over because there's a lay misconception that we all do the same thing. Public defenders and prosecutors do exactly the same thing. We do a lot of the same stuff. But then there's stuff that we do that they don't do, and then there's stuff that they do that we don't do as public defenders. For example, on the criminal docket, the prosecutor gets 100% of the criminal docket. Public defenders only get the cases that are appointed to the public defender. That's roughly about 75%. The other people either go pro-say or hire lawyers. And the prosecutor starts to deal with those cases. So there's a disparity toward the prosecutors. Juvenile to the frequency and juvenile status cases. Those are handled in circuit court. Public defenders do those as well. In fractions, 100% prosecutor none public defender. Okay, so when the prosecutors have to take a traffic ticket and do a trial on a traffic ticket or process that through, there's not a public defender. You don't have a right to a lawyer for a traffic ticket. Child support enforcement, prosecutors prosecute child support enforcement. Sometimes and often public defenders get involved in child support enforcement cases as well. Those are in circuit court. Things that we do that the prosecutor's office doesn't do are chins and termination of criminal rights cases. There is the exception that there could be a thing called a chins six that gets filed by the prosecutor's office. There's only been maybe a handful two to three since I've been here since 2022. We do all of our appeals or the defense bar is responsible for doing its appeals. The prosecutor has the attorney general to do the appeals for them. So that's where transcripts come in, whether it's a chins, a TPR, a direct appeal, after a jury case, an inter auditory appeal, transcripts, time, a whole nother case that has to be filed. That's handled by the public defender's agency, the prosecutor's office doesn't do those. Contested adoptions, prosecutor's office doesn't do those. Contempt hearings are done between the court and a person that's being found in contempt or being held in contempt. They get a defense lawyer, a prosecutor doesn't do those. And mental health commitments. The only time that there's a red flag law that can also be seen as a mental health commitment, prosecutors do those. They actually prosecute those, but the general mental health commitment. Somebody's been involuntarily committed. They don't have prosecutors for that. It's a hospital and whoever's seeking to have the person held, and they're entitled to a public defender. It goes back to the why we do. Why do we even have a public defender or defense lawyers? The easy answer is to look at this in two ways. There are the moral reasons why. A society is judged by how it treats the least among it, not the best among it. It goes back as far as in the proverbs they talk about defending the destitute, the porn, the needy, defend the rights. And in a new testament, Matthew, they talk about what Jesus said is when I was in jail, did you come and visit me? But then you can look at it secularly too. Why do we do this? Specifically, if you believe in law and order, then you believe what our Constitution's call for, Constitution's plural, Indiana and the federal. They're not the same. They are separate and distinct constitutions. But they both found that there's a right to counsel, a right for somebody to be heard, a right to have somebody have a lawyer to help them be heard. Ultimately, it makes a lot of sense. If you're a conservative, then you want to conserve people's rights against the government. So we are reacting to accusations by government against citizens. We do not pick the charges. We don't pick the cases they're filed. And we don't pick people that are accused. But we choose to represent them. All of this quick presentation was to show is that I want you to be careful when you hear things and check the facts. Check the facts. There's a lot of talk about transparency, but you can look in a window and not see what's going on in a room. You actually have to get into the room. You actually have to look at what is set on the table and you can get that data. But you need to get all of the data. You need to look at the expenditures to be able to know what the costs are to the county.