The Missouri Western District Court of Appeals has upheld a 2016 ruling from Cole County Judge Jon Beetem dismissing state Public Defender Michael Barrett's lawsuit challenging then Gov. Jay Nixon's decision to withhold $3.5 million from the system's appropriations.
Beetem's ruling says Nixon had the constitutional authority to withhold the money. The appeals court agreed.
Barrett's lawsuit argued the public defenders are an independent part of Missouri's judicial branch of government and therefore not an executive agency subject to the governor's budget controls.
The state's public defenders represent people in criminal cases where there is a possibility of a jail or prison sentence and the person charged can't afford to hire an attorney.
Beetem said in his ruling: "The defense of indigent defendants is not the exercise of judicial power. Plaintiffs certainly do not legislate. They exercise executive powers, not withstanding their placement on the organization chart."
The public defenders' lawsuit also argued Nixon's withholding violated Missouri's Constitution when he withheld more money from the public defender system's budget than he withheld from other budget lines.
However, Beetem ruled, that's a part of the governor's constitutional power to "reduce the expenditures of the state or any of its agencies below their appropriations. There is no requirement that any withholdings reduce the expenditures of the state as a whole."
For years, the public defender system and its supervising commission have argued their attorneys carry an almost impossible workload - which, some have argued, is so large the attorneys can't provide appropriate legal services, therefore violating the defendants' constitutional right to legal services.