We are the lawyers, investigators, alternative sentencing workers,
mitigation specialists, and administrative specialists who work to defend
any indigent person who is facing a loss of liberty.
OUR MISSION is to provide high quality, client-centered legal representation to indigent persons of all ages, accused of crimes or facing a deprivation of liberty throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Our fulfillment of this mission is essential to the defense and protection of fundamental constitutional rights and the preservation of a fair and just criminal justice system. As we fulfill this mission, we seek to address our clients’ needs as members of our society. We passionately advocate for alternatives to costly incarceration and provide access to services which help to make clients more productive members of their communities, thereby saving costs, reducing recidivism, and making our communities safer. Our commitment to and strategy for meeting this mission is outlined in the DPA Strategic Plan.
HISTORY OF DPA | A half century ago, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that “common justice demands” that an attorney must be appointed when a person charged with a felony is too poor to hire his own counsel. Gholson v. Commonwealth, 212 S.W.2d 537 (Ky. 1948). In the 1960s Kentucky attorneys began to request compensation when they were forced to represent indigents charged with a crime. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court determined that if a state wants to take away a person’s liberty, it has to provide an attorney to those persons too poor to hire their own in order to comply with the Federal Constitution. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). While consistently unsuccessful in convincing Kentucky’s highest Court that the judiciary could and should order payment, Kentucky’s appointed attorneys did persuade the Kentucky Supreme Court to the point that the Court began to directly encourage the General Assembly to provide a systematic solution for paying the attorneys who were being made to represent the accused. On September 22, 1972, Kentucky’s highest Court characterized the forced representation of indigents as an “intolerable condition” and held it was an unconstitutional taking of an attorney’s property – his service to the client – without compensation. From then on no Kentucky attorney could be required to represent an indigent absent compensation. Bradshaw v. Ball, 487 S.W.2d 294 (Ky. 1972). While the appeal in Bradshaw was pending, the 1972 Legislature, at the request of Governor Wendell Ford, created the Office of Public Defender, now the Department of Public Advocacy (DPA), and gave it the responsibility to represent all persons in Kentucky charged with or convicted of a crime. House Bill 461 sponsored by Representatives Kenton, Graves and Swinford passed the House 60-18 on March 7, 1972 and the Senate 26-5 on March 14, 1972. It allocated $1,287,000 for FY 73 and FY 74.
DPA AGENCY | Each year, DPA attorneys, investigators, mitigation specialists, alternative sentencing workers and administrative specialists handle over 140,000 trial and post-trial cases statewide. These include involuntary commitment, juvenile cases, misdemeanors including DUI, and felonies including complex and difficult cases including sex abuse, murder, and cases where death is sought as a penalty.
Strategic Plan
Four Major Goals to Improve the Department’s Representation of Clients and to Add Value to the Services DPA Provides | Read the Full Strategic Plan
I. Litigate
Improve our litigation on behalf of our clients
- Increase the rate of pretrial release for clients
- Increase the use of alternative sentencing plans to reduce unnecessary incarceration of clients
- Obtain helpful information for clients through discovery and investigation
- Advocate for clients when they face fines, fees, and other related costs
- Understand and litigate issues of forensic science
- Improve juvenile representation
- Seek instructions to jurors that advance the defense theory of the case
- Understand and seek to limit collateral consequences of a criminal conviction that will negatively impact the lives of our clients
- Litigate the suppression of unlawful evidence
- Improve representation of those who the County seeks to involuntary commit
- Maximize representation at the preliminary hearings
- Advocate for the client at sentencing according to national performance standards
- Advance expungement of convictions
II. Support
Improve our collaboration and communication within the agency
- Cultivate a culture of leadership by providing opportunities for staff to share knowledge and offer support for each other
- Continue to develop the incident response strategy to enhance safety of our staff and clients by fine tuning agency protocols, increasing data collection, and establishing the public advocate special investigator position with safety administration and investigation duties
- Explore improvement of staff’s connectivity in the field and courtrooms
- Continue to improve our case management system
- Ensure the security of confidential data
- Continue to improve inter-divisional collaboration through training, case reviews, distance learning, and written communication
III. Train
Enhance access for all staff to training and resources at the national, local, and agency level
- Continue to support newly hired attorneys with four weeks of hands-on training focused on the major areas of criminal law, including juvenile law, district court, circuit court, and litigation skills
- Improve access to training for all conflict attorneys
- Continue to use new technologies to provide distance-learning and online resources to all staff and contractors
- Provide increased training opportunities for support staff
- Evaluate and continue to improve training related to juvenile practice
- Incorporate issues of difference, implicit bias, and diversity into all training
IV. Engage
Engage community and statewide leaders and stakeholders to identify our mutual interests impacting our clients, improve and reform the criminal justice system, and demonstrate the value we provide as an agency to the state and our communities
- Strive to increase the diversity of DPA staff to better meet the needs of our clients by:
- Continuing to recruit for diversity
- Continuing to partner with the Kentucky Bar Association and others to broaden the pool of candidates for all job positions
- Develop training and litigation resources to address issue of implicit bias in the criminal justice system
- Explore incorporating community-based outreach programs and fostering approaches, such at Participatory Defense in our communities
- Continue to be an active partner in the criminal justice system statewide and in local communities
- Improve the quality of our online resources to provide vital information to our clients, policy makers, and the public
- Provide the community with training and resources for seeking expungement and reentry
- Continue to educate criminal justice leaders on our public value
- Continue to work with allies to advance a fairer criminal justice system