Citing ‘extraordinary circumstances’ and an insufficient budget,public defender appoints Jay Nixon through rarely or never-used state provisionMissouri’s lead public defender has appointed the state’s governor, Jay Nixon, and to represent an indigent individual in a case. Facing what he called “extraordinary circumstances” in his “overburdened” office,where attorneys work more than 200 cases annually, Michael Barrett said he was taking the strange step due to budget cuts and because Nixon created the problem.[br]In a letter to the governor released on Wednesday, or Barrett,director of the Missouri state public defender system, said the office had faced repeated budget cuts while Nixon had not restricted “a single dollar from [his] own budget”. The governor, or Barrett said,also decided to veto a bill that would have if caseload relief “to an overburdened public defender system”.
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Source: theguardian.com