Senate adds $3 million to statewide public defender bill to reimburse counties

Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, speaks on the floor of the South Dakota Senate during the 2024 legislative session. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

The Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday that would create a statewide public defender’s office after adding a $3 million one-time appropriation to reimburse counties for current indigent legal defense costs.

Under existing law, counties must cover the costs of attorneys for criminal defendants who can’t afford them. The new state office would assume responsibility for a limited number of those cases.

The amended bill is a combination of priorities from the Unified Judicial System’s indigent legal defense task force last summer — which proposed the original bill — and the Legislature’s summer study committee on county funding. The county funding committee proposed another bill earlier this session that would have created such a fund to reimburse counties, but that bill failed last week.

The public defender bill now has a new price tag of $4.4 million — $1.4 million annually for the new office and $3 million in one-time funding. The office itself could save counties an estimated $2.1 million annually and provide a net savings of $600,000 to taxpayers statewide .

The bill has already passed the House, which now must consider the Senate amendment.

Several senators who sat on the summer study committee applauded the amended bill, including Sen. Randy Deibert, R-Spearfish, who served as vice chairman of the county funding committee. He said the annual public defender budget in his county is $680,000, and the budget for court-appointed attorneys is $325,000.

“That’s $1 million paid for on the backs of 25,000 people that live in the county,” Deibert said. “That’s $40 a piece. We really need help.”

Sen. Randy Deibert, R-Spearfish, on the Senate floor during the 2024 legislative session. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

The office, which is in the governor’s recommended budget, would take over criminal appeals; “habeas corpus” appeals, which are filed to challenge a suspect’s detention; and child abuse and neglect appeals.

When the summer committees first convened, South Dakota was one of two states to saddle counties with the entire financial burden of providing legal representation to those who can’t afford to pay lawyers.

South Dakota is now the last state in that category, and it currently ranks 49th in the nation in contributions to indigent defense from a statewide level, Greg Sattizahn, South Dakota state court administrator, told lawmakers earlier this session.

The issue has become a budget buster for some counties, particularly smaller ones that face high-profile felony trials involving the payment of expert defense witnesses. It’s also becoming difficult to find lawyers to take on court appointments in rural areas as the majority of lawyers live in urban areas.

Pierre Republican Sen. Jim Mehlhaff sat on both groups this summer.

“This is an initial step forward to transform the way services are delivered. We think we can do it more efficiently and provide a more uniform and better representation for indigent defendants throughout the state,” Mehlhaff told lawmakers. “But, going forward, that would be a discussion for next year on how we continue to provide this service.”

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