As the courts are ground to a halt with a work stoppage, is it time for the state to change its public defender system?

Dozens of criminal cases are being dismissed in Massachusetts and other states as public defenders refuse to take on new cases until they get a pay raise.

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts lawmakers on Thursday passed a funding bill that includes a pay raise for public defenders as part of an effort to end a legal crisis that led to dozens of cases being ...

Massachusetts attorney Lisa Newman-Polk says she stopped taking lower-level public defender cases eight years ago because of the pay. "The rate is just so abysmal," Newman-Polk said.

In Massachusetts, full-time public defenders, who are salaried staff, typically cover about 20% of the state's caseload while court-appointed private attorneys, known as bar advocates, handle the ...

As of Tuesday, nearly 3,500 defendants did not have a public defender, a dashboard from the Oregon Judicial Department showed. Of those, about 143 people were in custody, some for longer than ...

More than 120 defendants in Massachusetts have had their charges — ranging from assault to drug possession — dropped after public defenders refused to take new cases over a long-running pay dispute ...

Public defenders in Massachusetts and other states demand a pay raise By Deborah Becker Published August 5, 2025 at 4:07 AM EDT ...

BOSTON — Defendants are being released in Massachusetts in the wake of a prolonged dispute over pay for the state's public defenders, and one of those set free was charged with a serious crime.

Jen O'Brien is an attorney leading the push to increase pay for Massachusetts public defenders, which starts at $65 an hour. JEN O'BRIEN: The state certainly prosecutes enough people.

More than 60 were in custody. The pay of public defenders is a national issue Massachusetts is just the latest state struggling to adequately fund its public defender system.