Covers the sequence of a state criminal case from first appearance to disposition, what a written fee agreement includes and excludes, how indigency screening works, and what to ask before signing with a lawyer.
A man arrested on a Friday night for a state jail felony sits in front of a magistrate at nine the next morning, still in the clothes he was booked in, and is handed a single sheet asking for his monthly income, the number of people who depend on him, the make and year of his vehicle, and whether anyone has posted or plans to post his bond. He signs it under oath. That form, filled out in under three minutes by someone who has not slept, is the document that determines whether the county pays for his lawyer. It is worth understanding what it actually asks and what a court does with the answers.
The affidavit is a sworn financial statement, not a request
Most counties use a version of the same instrument: current income from all sources, spouse's income in some jurisdictions, dependents, cash on hand, bank balances, real property, vehicles, and existing debts or obligations. Many courts measure the result against a percentage of the federal poverty guidelines, often set generously above them, and some add a separate test asking whether the defendant could retain counsel without substantial hardship to himself or his family. The thresholds are local, published in the county's indigent defense plan, and checkable. A careful reader looks up the plan before filling in the form, because the standard is written down and the form is not self-explanatory.
Two entries cause more trouble than the rest. Bond is one: a defendant whose family scraped together a bail bond premium is frequently asked to explain why that money was available for release but not for a lawyer, and some plans treat posted bond as evidence of resources while others expressly do not. Employment is the other, because income at the time of the affidavit is what counts, and a person who has just lost a job through arrest should say so on the form rather than list the prior wage. Courts may verify. Filing a false affidavit is its own offense.
A rotating list and a public defender office are not the same appointment
Under an assigned counsel system, the court draws from a list of private attorneys who have applied, met qualification standards for the offense level, and agreed to accept the county's fee schedule. Appointments are supposed to rotate in order, which is the whole point of the design, and the county pays by the case or by the hour against a published schedule with caps for pretrial work, trial days, and investigators or experts. The lawyer runs a private practice alongside the appointments. A defendant who wants to know what he is getting can ask which list his attorney is on, how long she has been on it, and what her retained caseload looks like.
A public defender office is a government agency with salaried lawyers, in-house investigators, social workers in some jurisdictions, and supervisors who assign cases internally. The comparison that matters is not private versus public but resourced versus not. An assigned attorney with a reasonable list and a functioning expert budget is well positioned; so is a defender office with vertical representation and a caseload policy. Some counties run managed assigned counsel programs, which put an independent administrator between the judge and the appointment, and that arrangement is worth asking about directly.
The caseload question deserves a real answer
National caseload standards exist, they are numerical, and they are the reason the question comes up. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, within the Department of Justice, tracks indigent defense delivery systems across the states, and jurisdictions increasingly publish their own caseload data because state oversight commissions require reporting. Ask the office for its current per-attorney figure and its policy for declining appointments when the number goes past standard. Offices that track and report are the ones acting on the problem. On the assigned counsel side, the same inquiry is about how many appointments the attorney took last month and whether she has a trial setting near yours.
The county can bill for it later
Appointed does not mean free. Courts may order reimbursement of attorney's fees when the defendant has financial resources, and the order commonly appears in the judgment as a court cost or as a condition of community supervision, payable in monthly installments. The amount should reflect an actual finding of ability to pay, and it should not exceed what the county paid. Read the judgment when it issues, check the fee line against the appointment record, and raise a discrepancy while the trial court still has authority to correct it.
Anyone who fills out the affidavit accurately, reads the county's plan, asks the appointed attorney the two or three questions above, and checks the fee line in the final judgment has done everything the system gives him to do.