Legal desert — District court facing myriad challenges
From a public defender crisis to money concerns, the 6th Judicial District Court in Weston County is facing struggles and the Board of Weston County Commissioners discussed several of the issues with judges Mathew Castano and Stuart Healy on May 20.
Driven by financial concerns and the necessity of continued budget amendments to cover court costs, the commissioners have expressed the fear that the county may not be able to continue to cover the increased costs associated with court-appointed attorneys.
As previously reported, the board has passed two different resolutions adding funds to the district court special attorney line item.
The first addition was approved through the passage of Resolution 2025-7 on April 15. At that time, the board added $14,996.49 to the court’s account from the general financial administration account. In the same resolution, the board also added $5,140.49 to the court juror/witness fee line item.
One month later, on May 20, the board approved Resolution 2025-10, adding $18,243.40 to the district court special attorney line item.
At the time of approval, Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock said she hopes the additional $18,000 will be enough to cover the rest of the year but that the line item will be monitored.
According to District Court Clerk Riki Kaiser, court-appointed attorneys charge $100 an hour.
“Some examples of what a court-appointed attorney would charge for would be phone calls, document keeping, review of court pleadings, email communications, court appearance and mileage,” she told the News Letter Journal.
Public defenders
Further complicating the issue, Castano told the commissioners on May 20 that Northeast Wyoming has become somewhat of a legal desert because of the lack of attorneys in the area. This has been an issue facing Weston County for some time, and it even led to the election of an out-of-county county attorney several years ago.
“As you may or may not know, we are at peak crisis with public defenders in the 6th Judicial District,” Castano said. “We are allotted seven and we are down to one with a couple contracts being done.”
He added that the situation is bad enough that the public defender’s office has declined to take any more appointments on any misdemeanor cases.
“So, the circuit court judges are assigning those out to private attorneys,” Castano said, noting that the public defender’s office is paying the cost.
“And, actually, it’s bad enough at this point in time that they’re not even working off a volunteer list,” he said.
Juvenile cases
Castano also discussed juvenile cases and the court-appointed attorneys for those cases with the board.
Commissioner Marty Ertman said the board was curious about the process of appointment and what the county is statutorily required to “uphold” by funding the attorneys.
She said one of the biggest struggles for the county is determining how much to allocate in the budget for the special attorneys. Ertman asked if there was a place that the court could go that would be manageable for “tiny counties like us.”
“If you have a problem with your public defenders, we’re having a problem with money,” she said.
Healy, who joined the conversation via Microsoft Teams, suggested the county could use a three-year rolling average in budgeting but acknowledged the “broad standard deviation potential.”
He also suggested looking at the number of abuse and neglect cases, although he said that will not always provide an accurate picture because some cases are closed in months while others last years.
As for the process, Castano said individuals are told they are entitled to be represented by an attorney and that if they can’t afford one, the court can appoint one to represent them. At this time, they are then asked to fill out an affidavit under oath before the judge assigns an attorney.
Castano said that there is no hard dollar figure assigned to the decision guiding appointment of an public defender to a case.
“It’s up to the court to review it. And I think one thing that’s important to recognize there is that the issue isn’t always how much income does this family have,” he said. “It’s how much liquid assets do they have right now … because in order to engage an attorney, you usually lay down a retainer.”
As for those people paying for their attorneys, Castano said, the judge can order that a payment be made, but he indicated that there is not a good process for tracking those.
“And frankly, for most of them that I see, the amount of available income in the family would lead to a very, very minimal payment. In short, the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze,” he said.
“The other thing Weston County needs to recognize now, and Crook County is in the same situation, is you’re dealing with the effects of being in a legal desert,” Castano said. “We’re bringing attorneys on these over from Gillette because we just don’t have the attorneys in town to do them anymore.”
He said that the regionalization of law firms — meaning that lawyers are coming from Billings and Denver and maybe from bigger Wyoming communities — which compounds the finances problem.
According to Castano, this has been the major shift in the “legal market” over the past three decades.
“The, you know, two-attorney firm in a small community is really on the decline and that has effects on budgets, because, as I tell people all the time, one thing that’s not negotiable is geography,” Castano said. “And Gillette’s still going to be as far from Newcastle as it is, no matter what. And we got to pay.”
The other thing he wanted the commissioners to be aware of is that these attorneys are making “probably half of market rate.” According to Castano, the going rate is probably $200 to $250 an hour.
Increase in cases
Both judges agreed that their perception is that the number of cases involving the need for special attorneys assigned to multiple parties, specifically neglect and abuse cases, is on the rise. Chairman Nathan Todd asked the judges if the workload has exploded and contributed to the shortage being experienced over the past couple of years.
“I think that’s a really good question and it’s an interesting one because I would say they probably are,” Healy said. “I don’t have the numbers in front of me.”
According to Healy, the increase in cases could be attributed to the addition of Deputy County Attorney Jeani Stone to the county staff. He said that she specializes in juvenile cases.
“I think there probably were more cases that came before the court simply because there were cases that probably needed to come before the court that weren’t coming before the court because there wasn’t the personnel at the county attorney’s office to cover those cases,” Healy said.
Castano agreed.
“I’m going to call mine an impression. … My impression is that they are up,” Castano said. “I will tell you … we’re not getting frivolous cases filed. These are not someone’s not doing the laundry. So the cases are probably up, along with the convictions.”
Healy indicated that he was going to direct Kaiser to prepare a report to share with the board at a later date to provide data on the number of cases over the years, and Castano said he really wanted to emphasize that the cases coming out of Weston County are legitimate cases that need to be before the court.
“Well, in the position that we’re in the budget, what happens when there’s no more money?” Ertman pushed, noting that the county is looking at budget shortfalls, and the “tunnel is narrowing and the light is starting to look a lot like a freight train.”
“And I don’t know where we go to solve or try to mitigate this problem because as it escalates, everything else in this county degrades,” Ertman said. “So, we can’t put money on the roads. We can’t fix our county buildings. We can’t give our employees a raise, much less hire attorneys at the rate that they warrant.”
Castano suggested that the county discuss the issue with the Wyoming Legislature. He noted that the judges are not allowed to lobby, but they can educate.
“And this is an area in which we would be more than happy to educate,” Castano said.