Public Defender Melody Anchietta looked around the Laramie County District Court for her client, but Aja Unique Johnson, who was scheduled to be sentenced for forging a check, was nowhere to be found on the afternoon of July 22. 

When Judge Robin Cooley asked whether 25-year-old Johnson was present, Anchietta replied her client was not in the courtroom.

The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Rocky Edmonds, suggested the judge issue a bench warrant for Johnson’s arrest. Anchietta didn’t object. 

The bench warrant, another blemish on Johnson’s already long list of legal issues, could complicate her chances of getting probation and placement in residential treatment instead of two to four years in prison, but Anchietta didn’t have an explanation for her client’s absence.

“Your Honor, I’m not surprised she’s not here,” Anchietta said. “I believe this is the third time she’s missed court, and I do not have any good contact information for her.”

What Anchietta didn’t know, until a probation officer whispered to the prosecutor, who then told the judge, was that Johnson didn’t make it to court because she was being held for a different fraud charge in the Platte County Detention Center an hour’s drive away.

Anchietta’s uncertainty about her client’s whereabouts concerned Johnson’s mom, Velma. 

“She wasn’t defending my daughter’s rights,” Velma said. “I wanted to ask her why she agreed to a bench warrant, instead of asking for a continuance … and I wanted to know if we needed to get a different lawyer to defend my daughter.”

Hiring a private attorney, with a lower caseload may have helped, but a different public defender likely would have faced the same challenges that made it hard for Anchietta to track Johnson across jurisdictions. 

Johnson’s case was one of 123 Anchietta said she was juggling while paid to work three-quarters time. She starts most days around 9 a.m. by visiting clients in the Laramie County Detention Center. By 10 a.m., she’s in court, where she spends the rest of the work day.

“It may take two, three days before I can return phone calls, because I can’t use my phone when I’m in court,” she said.

That doesn’t leave much time to make the calls necessary to track down clients like Johnson who rack up new charges outside Laramie County. Yet Johnson, who said she couldn’t afford a private attorney, was dependent on Anchietta, her court-appointed public defender, to advocate for a favorable outcome in court. 

That tension is at the heart of longstanding concern that inadequate justice-system funding complicates public defenders’ ability to provide adequate criminal defense, a right provided by the Constitution.

4,000 hours

The state created the Wyoming State Public Defender’s Office in 1978 to ensure that indigent clients facing criminal charges — those unable to pay for their own counsel — are still afforded their constitutional right to a competent defense.

The state of Wyoming funds the agency mostly through the general fund, but counties are expected to chip in, and clients are often asked to pay a fee when their cases are resolved.

The agency has a two-year budget of just over $25 million to accomplish this mission. Gov. Mark Gordon’s budget proposal asks for a little more than $31 million for the 2025-26 biennium.

Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander), chairman of the Mental Health & Vulnerable Adult Task Force, and a former member of the House Appropriations Committee, told WyoFile that he’s aware of the agency’s challenges, but doesn’t recall denying the agency any requested funding.

“Every agency will say they need more money,” he said. “If an agency needs more funding, they need to ask for it, and prove to us that their request is accurate.”

Not all of the agency’s struggles can be solved with money. In the office’s 2025-26 budget request, the agency said it’s in crisis due to “burgeoning caseloads.”

Anchietta said that 90 of her current 123 cases are felonies. The Rand Corporation estimates mid- to low-level felonies require an average of 45 hours each to resolve.

That means Anchietta would have to work 4,050 hours a year to close those 90 felony cases. For context, the average U.S. employee who works 40 hours a week will clock 1,920 hours in a year before overtime.

Anchietta, who started with the Wyoming State Public Defenders’s Office in 2012, said she works seven days a week. If the seemingly endless caseloads and long hours required to defend her clients weren’t enough, she’s recovering from a stroke she suffered on Jan. 24, 2021.

Initially unresponsive, she awoke in the hospital unable to eat or speak. Though she said she was making calls to cover her cases the next day, it would be eight months before she could return to the courtroom.

“I was right-handed before I had the stroke, but I taught myself how to write with my left hand before I returned to work,” Anchietta said. “I also taught myself how to touch-type with both hands before I came back. I know how busy the public defender’s office can be, so I have never used it as an excuse for special treatment.”

Anchietta added that she didn’t want her clients to know why she was out.

“Many clients will use any excuse to try to keep getting new lawyers,” she said.

She occasionally worries about how that impacts her ability to properly defend her clients.

“If I feel that I’m not doing a good job, I will ask my supervisor for some time,” she said.

Anchietta estimates that 95% of her clients are wrestling with substance abuse. While she said she pushes to get judges to consider treatment instead of jail time, her clients’ addictions aren’t always visible.

“My clients might have been arrested for domestic violence or theft,” she said, “but they weren’t in possession when they were arrested. And they haven’t admitted they have a problem. That makes it harder to see who needs treatment.”

‘I didn’t know how to help her’

Check forgery was the newest of more than 25 charges Johnson had accumulated since she began wrestling with addiction in 2017. 

Johnson said that drug use compelled her to do things she’s come to regret, and she was seeking rehabilitation options as she contended with separate charges in Laramie, Albany and Platte counties.

Her first run-ins with the law came in 2015, while attending South High School in Cheyenne. Johnson’s mom, Velma, said she became increasingly concerned as her daughter was getting into trouble for truancy more frequently.

“There was a while there,” said Velma, “I was getting calls from the police at the high school every day. They’d call and say they chased her but couldn’t catch her.”

Her daughter is smart, sensitive and caring, but she has a temper, Velma said.

“If she thinks you’ve done her wrong, she will let you know,” Velma said. “That makes it hard to push her around, but it also means she was getting into all kinds of trouble. And I didn’t know what to do to help her with that.”

Johnson began running with the wrong crowd around that time. She turned to drugs to cope with the effects of severe depression and anxiety. Though Johnson didn’t know it at the time, she said she was in the throes of what would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder.

The combination of mental health challenges, and self-medicating with drugs, made it hard for Johnson to hold down a job. She didn’t have the money to hire a private attorney to address the mounting cascade of criminal charges.

Who’s looking?

Beyond high caseloads, public defenders often work with clients caught in a cycle of addiction and poverty, the one compounding the other. While one case works through the justice system, the client may rack up new charges in other jurisdictions.

Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie), House Minority Whip, said the problems plaguing the public defender’s office are systemic, stemming from underfunding and a conservative Legislature that still believes incarceration is a better deterrent to crime than rehabilitation, mental health care and education.

“I’ve heard plenty of stories similar to this one, where people have faced serious issues working with a public defender,” Provenza said. “That’s not the fault of the specific public defender, it’s our failure as a state to provide a defense for indigent accused people, and to protect them from government overreach.”

Short of more comprehensive reform, Wyoming could look to its neighbors for updates that would lighten public defenders’ loads, Provenza said.

“In Colorado, I can type someone’s name into a search, and I can find out whether they’re in prison or a county jail anywhere in the state,” Provenza said. “That’s not the case in Wyoming, where we’re failing according to the standards set forth by the Public Records Act.”

In Anchietta’s case, she can see who’s in the Laramie County Detention Center in Cheyenne, where her public defender’s office is located. But as Provenza described, Anchietta can’t easily follow clients who end up incarcerated elsewhere in the state.

“That lack of transparency is why our public defenders can fail their clients, and no one will know about it,” Provenza said. “And who’s looking?”

Provenza said that role has traditionally belonged to journalists, but with local news publishers closing at a clip of two per week, there are increasingly fewer journalists to keep tabs on the machinations of Wyoming’s criminal justice system.

“I’ve tried to pass criminal justice reform bills,” Provenza said. “Study after study shows that incarceration is more expensive than rehabilitation, support systems and education.

“Instead,” Provenza continued, “we’ve got an authoritarian Republican Legislature that still believes punitive measures are more effective, while also boasting that they’re fiscally conservative. But those two things don’t always align.”

‘A ticking time bomb’

Roughly 12,500-13,000 cases are assigned annually to the State Public Defender’s Office. The court decides which defendants are eligible for representation by a public defender based on the defendant’s ability to pay for a defense attorney regardless of caseloads.

In 2019, then-State Public Defender Diane Lozano announced her office couldn’t accept new misdemeanor cases in Campbell County, where the combination of endless caseloads, long hours and low pay led to a shortage of attorneys.

Circuit Court Judge Paul Phillips held Lozano in contempt of court for that decision.

“Every citizen has a constitutional right to a defense,” Phillips told WyoFile. “I understand that they were down four, five attorneys at the time. But when they said they were incapable of doing their job, we had to find other attorneys in Campbell County and beyond, and twist their arms to come in and do the work that public defenders could no longer do.”

Like many other states, including Colorado, Phillips said that the Wyoming public defender’s office is chronically short-staffed. That means public defenders have caseloads that are almost always threatening to be too much.

When State Public Defender Brandon T. Booth, who took the reins of the agency from Lozano in 2024, spoke with WyoFile in early November, he had 10 attorneys working out of his Cheyenne office. They need 13 to meet their current caseload. He expects to hire one more in January, which means they will still be two attorneys short of current caseload demands.

Booth said that attorneys would not exceed 100% of the maximum number of cases allowed, per the Constitution, but he added that many of his attorneys were very close to that number. When asked what the specific number is, he said there isn’t one.

“There’s no specific number, because we also take into account the complexity of each individual case,” Booth said. “So, the number of cases varies.

“It takes a certain kind of attorney to work with the public defender’s office,” Booth added. “The workload is not insignificant, and attorneys may make more money with a private firm. With us, they need to be passionate about our mission to push through burnout. We just keep coming to work, trying to keep our heads above water.”

There is no easy answer to the challenges faced by working as a Wyoming public defender, Booth said. The money will always be short, the caseloads, and the hours worked, long.

As the workload increases, attorneys in neighboring counties may help with those cases. If that’s not possible, the public defender’s office seeks attorneys from private firms to represent their clients for about $100 an hour.

Yet Booth said that private attorneys aren’t always versed in criminal defense, nor the dynamic nature of clients who are struggling with addiction.

Working for the Public Defender’s office challenges an attorney’s obligation to ensure that their clients are afforded their constitutional right to a defense, said a public defender who agreed to speak with WyoFile anonymously out of concern they might lose their job for speaking out.

“Wyoming uses caseload guidelines from the 1970s,” the attorney said.

Those include: 150 felonies, 400 misdemeanors, 200 mental health cases, 200 juvenile cases, and 25 appeals in a given year.

The attorney said that, with new technologies like bodycam footage, it takes much longer to comb through the discovery from all responding officers and agencies.

“I have an ethical obligation to my clients, as we all do, and myself,” the attorney added. “People’s lives are on the line. When the system fails them, they get thrown into jail instead of rehab. Their criminal records may bar them from working certain jobs, voting, financial aid for college. That’s what’s at stake every time we represent a defendant without the necessary support. The whole thing is a ticking timebomb.”

Slowing the revolving door

Anchietta successfully petitioned for Johnson’s release from the Laramie County Detention Center during a hearing on July 8. But within a week of her release, Johnson was arrested for violating a probation order, stemming from theft charges dating back to 2021, out of Platte County.

Sitting in the Platte County Detention Center, Johnson slipped off Anchietta’s radar ahead of the July 22 sentencing hearing that resulted in the bench warrant. 

That worried Johnson’s mom, Velma, who believed that without treatment her daughter would stay caught in the cycle of charges and incarceration. 

Getting people into treatment to address the substance use and mental health issues underlying criminal behavior is one way to prevent people from cycling through the court system, Judge Phillips said. 

“The whole idea is to stop the revolving door,” said Phillips. “You’ve got people who, but for substance abuse, but for mental illness, wouldn’t really be involved in the criminal justice system. Their addictions, and in some cases, their serious mental illnesses, lead to crimes which can land them in jail.” 

Once they’re in jail, the revolving door begins to spin. If the underlying problems aren’t addressed, many offenders — like Johnson — violate probation after they’re released. They re-offend, wind up back in jail, and the cycle continues — taxpayers pay hundreds of dollars per person for each day of incarceration and public defenders’ caseloads swell. 

To get Johnson out of that cycle, and into a facility before her slot was given to someone else, Anchietta needed to resolve her client’s case in Laramie County. There were the charges in Platte County to contend with too. 

Fortunately, the judge there agreed with a prosecutor’s recommendation that Johnson should go to a residential facility near Cody as part of a plea deal to forego incarceration for treatment.

In Laramie County, Johnson’s sentencing hearing was rescheduled for Nov. 25. She appeared via phone in District Court Judge Robin Cooley’s docket in Cheyenne.

Though no one in the courtroom could see Johnson, who was still being held in Platte County Detention Center, her voice came over the speaker system.

Johnson apologized for her actions and asked if she might participate in a rehabilitation program.

“Somewhere outside Laramie County,” Johnson said, drawing a low round of laughter from those attending the hearing.

Anchietta told Cooley that, given her client’s difficult childhood — many of her family members had suffered the impacts of addiction, they were involved in similar crimes, and, because of that, Johnson had been in foster care — treatment would be more effective than prison.

After some discussion with prosecutors, Cooley suspended the recommended two- to four-year prison sentence for three years of supervised probation.

Johnson’s conditions of release include participating in a residential treatment program, a comprehensive cognitive mental health evaluation, counseling, financial literacy courses, and abstaining from drugs and alcohol.

“With that, court’s in recess,” said Cooley. “All rise.”

Everyone in the courtroom could hear Johnson’s metal chair slide and skip across the concrete floor in the Platte County jail as she stood. Though she faces a long, hard road, with Anchietta’s help, Johnson’s on a path to recovery.

Anchietta said that she was happy with the outcome — even if it only lasts for a moment.

“I consider getting a client into treatment and out of prison a victory,” said Anchietta. “They at least have a chance to improve their life.”

Yet Anchietta keeps her head down and moves on to the next case.

“Even after a ‘not guilty’ verdict in a trial, which is the biggest victory a defense attorney can have, you still have to be back in court and deal with another client the next day,” she said. “Clients don’t care about your victories for other people, only themselves.”

This story was supported by a seed grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.