The East Baton Rouge Metro Council has allocated an extra $500,000 to the East Baton Rouge Office of the Public Defender — the office that primarily represents people who can’t afford to pay for a defense attorney — bringing the office closer to 2025’s appropriation from the parish.
The new funds bring the public defender's office's appropriated budget to about $1.47 million, more than last year's total of about $1.33 million. The allocation came from a fund balance where an excess of taxes was collected over what was planned for in the budget.
Kyla Romanach, the chief public defender, said she’s thankful for the money, but she’s still underfunded. She laid off some staffers she won’t be able to rehire because new needs have popped up.
“We were potentially gonna be at a crisis point in terms of our ability to meet our legal requirements, and this keeps that from happening,” Romanach said. “I need that money to hire some lawyers for some needs that came up because of an increase that we’ve had in the number of life without parole cases.”
Her office had 277 life without parole cases in 2025. And cases have been increasing since 2023, when the office of the Public Defender only handled 201. These are more complicated cases, with higher stakes, so it takes more time and effort to work them.
Even with new hires, Romanach said people will still have case loads much more than what is recommended. A couple of lawyers in Romanach’s office have as many as 300 cases, she said. Typically, she tries to keep that number between 100 and 115 cases.
Louisiana public defenders handled more than 140,000 cases statewide in 2025, data shows.
Public defenders are supposed to make the constitutional right to counsel a reality. But without proper funding, Aaron Gottlieb, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies the lack of resources among public defenders, said that doesn’t always happen.
“Which then really means this idea of whether you have a right to a fair trial or not, like the person who's being charged with a crime, is not really given a fair shot,” Gottlieb said.
Currently, the system runs on public defense lawyers working for a fraction of what they would make in private practice. Some may not be performing their best because they just don’t have the time or resources. Alaina Bloodworth, executive director at the Black Public Defender Association, said it all takes a toll.
“I had many late nights. I think it causes an insane amount of stress, and honestly, I think a lot of people don't last in public defense,” Bloodworth said. “And it is not because they don't have the skill or the willpower.”
Law school debt doesn’t go away because you’re a public defender. So when funding dries up because of politics that are beyond their control, public defenders have to decide if passion is the only thing they can run on.
In comparison, the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office had fewer cases but received nearly five times the funding as the public defender's office
Even in the most recent appropriation from East Baton Rouge, the public defenders received $500,000 while the District Attorney’s office received $825,000.
District Attorney Hillar Moore has also threatened to sue the parish to get more funding for his office.
But Moore isn’t against public defenders getting more money. He commonly shows support for them while advocating for his office.
It’s not just Moore, either. During the budget hearing, where the metro council heard from officials in parish criminal justice departments, most leaders told the council how essential public defenders are to the criminal justice process.
Not everyone who gets accused of a crime is guilty. So, Romanach said, when the system stalls, if the person didn’t make bail, they sit in jail.
Gottlieb’s research showed this was an issue nationwide. But Bloodworth said Louisiana has it worse because attorneys usually go it alone.
“When I think about going to these other offices across the country, they have a team of people to represent someone,” she said. “That was not the case here at all. It’s still not the case here for most of Louisiana.”
She said that a team of people does more for their client than mounting a defense. A study published in the Harvard Law Review found that taking a holistic approach to defense addresses underlying issues and consequences of being accused of a crime, which leads to outcomes like average sentence lengths going down 24%.
But that requires support staff and time, which Bloodworth said would require more funding.
“Sustainable and consistent funding would, I think, solve big parts of this issue,” Bloodworth said.
