The Orleans Parish public defender's office will soon restore services slashed during a budget fiasco in February, partly thanks to recent increases in fees that criminal defendants, traffic ...

claude-kellyjpg-b4b06996ab45ef52.jpg. Kelly, 52, replaces Virginia Schlueter, the longtime federal public defender who resigned in October after the office was forced to make deep budget cuts.

Louisiana's new governor, Democrat John Bel Edwards, acknowledges the public defender overload. But he says there's no plan for more funding with the state facing a $1.9 billion budget shortfall.

New Orleans Runs Short on Public Defenders A judge in New Orleans has released 42 inmates who were suspected of drug crimes. They lack legal counsel, so they can't be tried.

But legal filings document how, for more than three years, the sheriff’s deputies and his post-Katrina hodgepodge of jail buildings have made work more difficult for the Orleans Public Defenders ...

The Orleans Public Defenders will institute a hiring freeze and stop farming out some cases to private attorneys, the agency has announced — the first step in a plan to ...

Judges hearing an appeal on whether putting poor defendants on wait lists for attorneys violates their constitutional rights appeared skeptical as to whether it was the federal court’s job to step in.

The city's chief public defender, Derwyn Bunton, is stepping down.After almost 14 years of defending the poor in the state's busiest courthouse — he says it's time, and feels the office is in a ...

If you go to jail in New Orleans, chances are you'll be represented by an Orleans Parish public defender.The Orleans Public Defender's Office has recently faced a million-dollar budget deficit.

The White House on Thursday announced the nomination of Claude Kelly III to an open federal judgeship in the New Orleans-based Eastern District of Louisiana.