{"id":282973,"date":"2026-04-24T01:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282973\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T01:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:12:06","slug":"alameda-county-public-defender-right-to-counsel-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282973\/","title":{"rendered":"Alameda County Public Defender: \u2018Right to Counsel Is Dead\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Across the Bay Area, public defenders have reported that the number of criminal cases filed has been steadily rising, while their offices\u2019 budgets have not.<\/p>\n<p>Tensions came to a head in San Francisco last month when Public Defender Mano Raju was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kqed.org\/news\/12075775\/san-francisco-public-defender-faces-contempt-charges-after-refusing-new-cases\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">held in contempt of court<\/a> after refusing to take on new cases one day a week starting last May, citing understaffing and a lack of adequate resources to provide due process. Raju is facing a fine of $26,000 and plans to appeal.<\/p>\n<p>Raju\u2019s office highlighted a recent study linking excessive workloads with a violation of court ethics.<\/p>\n<p>Woods said he asked the Alameda County Board of Supervisors for more lawyers, investigators and support staff. According to the 2023 National Public Defense Workload Study, Alameda County Superior Court would need to add an additional 104 attorneys to meet the study\u2019s staffing benchmarks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur clients are suffering more, and nobody seems to be listening,\u201d Alameda Chief Assistant Public Defender Aundrea Brown said on Thursday, dressed in all black. \u201cIt\u2019s not an \u2018us versus them\u2019. If they suffer, we all suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Courts in other California cities are experiencing similar strains, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Across the Bay Area, public defenders have reported that the number of criminal cases filed has been steadily&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-282973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}