At a July meeting in Columbus, Ohio Public Defender Commission Chair William Creedon put the question plainly: “Do we do a wholesale change of the way indigent defense is delivered in Ohio?”
The answer could reshape how thousands of low-income defendants get a lawyer — how the state guarantees its constitutional promise of adequate criminal defense.
Public outcry in Cuyahoga County last year jump-started an exhaustive debate over Ohio’s indigent defense standards. An investigation by The Marshall Project – Cleveland found juvenile court judges selectively assigning cases to unqualified defense attorneys. The commission, at the time, was overdue for a review of the statewide rules for reimbursing counties that paid private attorneys to take public defense cases.
Cuyahoga County also played a role in the commission’s last review in 2013.
“Discussions at the time were in the context of … concerns about the appointment system in Cuyahoga, which I understand is still an ongoing issue to this day,” attorney Jefferson Liston, who then chaired the commission, told current members. “It centered a lot on not just how people were being reimbursed, but it also centered on pay to play in … who was being appointed.”
Commission gathers input potential solutions
The current commission is concerned that stricter standards for trial experience or legal education could exacerbate a shortage of lawyers reported in 82 of Ohio’s 88 counties, according to a 2025 survey by the Ohio State Bar Association.
Paying attorneys more is one solution. The Office of the Ohio Public Defender, overseen by the commission, successfully lobbied lawmakers this year to lift the $75-an-hour reimbursement cap for appointed counsel. But the state has a finite amount for indigent defense. If some counties increased their hourly rates to attract more attorneys, the state would have to reimburse everyone at a lower percentage to offset the additional costs.
With so many cases ending in plea deals, especially juvenile cases, changing the trial experience requirement is another solution. Commission members heard proposals to allow substitutes for trial experience such as time in courtrooms cross-examining witnesses or challenging prosecutors in contested court hearings.
Some private attorneys told the commission that a first-year lawyer might be as effective as an attorney with decades of experience, or even more so.
But a coalition of public defenders staunchly opposed any watering down of the standards. And some aspects, notably how local judges design and run each county’s indigent defense system in Ohio, appear sacrosanct, and potentially problematic.
“The judges really enjoy and cherish their appointment power,” Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Blaise Katter told the commission. By law, attorney assignments must not be influenced by elected officials, including juvenile judges in Cuyahoga County who still assign or have their staff assign attorneys to cases.
Therein lies a more fundamental problem, Katter explained: It’s “a system that rewards attorneys who do not try cases and do not tie up the court system with multiple hours. And that is the No. 1 issue that I hear from our membership.”
