New state criminal defense office looking for first chief

State hoping to help counties with indigent defendants who can be budget busters

South Dakota’s bid to create a statewide office to handle criminal defense for indigent defendants hit a milestone with the posting of a job to hire the chief defender Wednesday.

That post will oversee the new office of Indigent Legal Services, which the Legislature created this year at the request of Supreme Court Chief Justice Steven Jensen and a statewide indigent defense commission that issued a report last year. The law also created the Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which approved the hiring of a chief defender at its first meeting on May 16.

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The office was created to ease the strain on counties who find themselves burdened with the expenses of defending indigent suspects in serious felony cases. The office will handle criminal appeals, habeas corpus cases and abuse or neglect of child cases.

South Dakota was one of only two states in the nation last year that continued to rely on a county-based indigent defense system, Jensen told lawmakers earlier this year. Minnehaha County and Pennington County have public defender offices, but smaller counties are left to hire private lawyers when they face a situation in which an indigent suspect needs representation, which is a constitutional guarantee.

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