Let’s go back 50-plus years and look at Iroquois County’s legal system. Specifically, we’ll examine how it met the needs of an indigent party for legal advice – or, more importantly, the need for representation in court for some serious matter.

It was 1970, and this young Clifton boy, now a lawyer and having served his time in the military, wanted courtroom experience and was with a firm known for its trial work. He was ready to learn about the application of the law in court and about the various judges.

In 1971, after having learned that Iroquois County had no public defender, the boy ventured to Watseka for a meeting with Chief Judge David Oram. At the time, he was living in Kankakee. He had learned that when there was an indigent defendant in need of counsel in Iroquois County, the judge assigned the case to one of the various practicing lawyers in the county.

At that first meeting with Oram, the young lawyer asked if he could be assigned a case or two even though he did not, at the time, live in the county. Oram was all over him.

“How many do you want? These local lawyers hate criminal law.”

I was in.

I was assigned a number of cases with different levels of severity – from burglary to arson, driving intoxicated to rape. I was getting my taste of jury trials, and I loved it.

Then, I heard that the county was going to have a public defender for the first time. It would be part-time as needed. I applied.

It turns out that I was the only lawyer who applied!

For the next six years, I held that position. The caseload was about 40% of my workweek and earned me $7,500 a year, plus $2,000 for expenses. I tried every type of case imaginable – from murder and major arson to burglaries and drugs, and even representing minors who had been abused and needed to find alternate accommodations. Other cases included those involving forgery and shotgunning the front door of the county jail.

Although I loved trying such cases, it was time for me to move on, and criminal work was to be history. Fortunately, the public defender’s office in Iroquois County went on with substantial salary increases.

Over the past decades, the amount of crime has not slowed, and the need for public defenders has risen in the state of Illinois. As a result, some counties are short on lawyers – especially those who want to take free criminal cases.

Having no public defender was not new. Abraham Lincoln often agreed to represent indigents accused of crimes. But the constitutional requirement for the right to have counsel, regardless of affording one, took a totally new position when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Gideon v. Wainwright in 1949. For the first time, everyone was entitled to a lawyer, even if he or she could not afford one. Thus, the age of having a personal one available in each state and county was in place.

Illinois passed the requirement of having a public defender in 1969. Thus, the move in Iroquois County to have and pay for such an attorney was mandated. But crime was on the rise, and with new discovery techniques such as DNA and other aids to police, the number of cases coming to court grew exponentially.

Recently, Illinois passed a law that requires every defendant to have the right to ask for a release from custody pending trial, especially where the individual cannot raise the money to be bonded out.

This act is called the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity Act or SAFE-T Act. Thus, criminals yet to be tried but in custody can petition to be released without bond.

Many Illinoisans are totally opposed to this new law. This act brought two dynamic changes. First, every person in custody could ask for release, thus reducing the number of people being held in jail pending trial. Second, each such petition needed a lawyer to argue the facts and circumstances of the case to see if the defendant was a risk to society and/or a risk for escape.

The second part of the act caused the number of cases landing in the public defender’s office to increase dramatically. The offices in the larger counties were being overrun, but even worse, the smaller counties with one or two public defenders were buried with cases for each lawyer. While the Iroquois have not seen a particular rise in such cases, other counties such as Champaign have overwhelmed the public defender offices there.

Now, a new law is being put into place. This one is to create a statewide public defender office and is expected to begin next summer. It will have an 11-member commission. That commission will select a state public defender, not unlike a state having an attorney general. This person will serve a two-year term starting Jan. 1, 2027. While the bureaucracy is clearly laid out, the same cannot be said for funding the new office. Much of that is still a question.

The idea, as I see its use, is to have a body of able defense attorneys on hand to be sent to places that are being overwhelmed or to counties that have no such defender. One downstate county has but one lawyer, and he is the state’s attorney! In some ways, this reduces the risk of a public defender enraging the sitting judge and then being removed, as this judge may well have appointed that defender in the first place. It also will aid those counties that have few or even no public defenders.

As a former public defender, I do see the need for such an office to give fairness to a case where the prosecution has available assets for preparing the case for trial, and the single public defender has no such assets available. One must remember that probably 15% to 20% of criminal defendants are wrongly accused and convicted of various offenses. I, personally, had more than my share.

Fortunately, I believe that those innocent clients did get their case dismissed, were found not guilty or had charges reduced by the prosecutor to charges that were more correct. Time will tell how this all works.