YAKIMA COUNTY, Wash. — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yakima County, the Yakima County Department of Corrections, Yakima County Superior Court, and several county officials. The lawsuit is on behalf of lower-income people charged with crimes in Yakima County Superior Court who have not had an attorney assigned to their case.
According to an ACLU-WA press release, Yakima County has a shortage of public defenders going back to at least 2022. The release goes on to say Yakima has failed to take meaningful action to address the shortage, and now they are unable to give constitutionally guaranteed counsel to people charged with crimes in Yakima County Superior Court.
The class-action suit claims that "poor people are being prosecuted, held in custody, given onerous conditions of release, and made to attend repeated court hearings that do not move their case forward – all without an attorney."
The ACLU-WA says some people are waiting months in the Yakima County jail without having an attorney assigned to their case, and people out of custody face strenuous conditions of release and no way to move their case forward.
The ACLU-WA claims the lack of counsel violates the defendant’s rights under the Washington State Constitution and Washington Superior Court Criminal Rules and constitutes an unlawful restraint. They also say the issue is interfering with peoples’ rights to due process and a speedy trial because many reach their speedy trial expiration without an attorney assigned to their case.
The “[l]ack of counsel not only interferes with indigent criminal defendants’ progression to critical stages by delaying those stages but also prevents any meaningful advocacy,” the lawsuit states.
“This is about fairness — everyone deserves and has a right to an attorney, and that’s not happening now for defendants in Yakima County,” said David Montes, staff attorney for the ACLU-WA. “They don’t have an opportunity to ask to be released. They don’t have an opportunity for an attorney to move their case forward. We have protections in place to ensure there isn’t government abuse of power and that people are treated fairly, and right now, those protections don’t exist for a whole class of people in Yakima County.”
In the lawsuit, the ACLU-WA is asking to have prosecution, incarceration, and imposition of pretrial conditions of release on people who do not have appointed counsel within a week unlawful restraint be declared, and to fix that restraint appropriately.
