Reliably Austin
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Travis County Hires Law Professor As Its First-Ever Public Defender

The Travis County Courthouse in Austin
Gabriel C. Pérez
/
KUT

Travis County has hired a University of Virginia law professor as the first person to lead its public defender office. Until last year, the county was the largest jurisdiction in the United States without an office to handle cases for poor adults accused of crimes.

Travis County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to hire Adeola Ogunkeyede as the chief public defender, ending a years-long process to establish a public defense program for the county.

Credit University of Virginia
Travis County Commissioners voted unanimously to hire Adeola Ogunkeyede as the county's first chief public defender.

Ogunkeyede currently heads the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program at the University of Virginia's Legal Aid Justice Center. Before that, she was a supervising attorney and a litigation supervisor at the Bronx Defenders, a public defense office that's been lauded by the American Bar Association for both its standards of low-income defense and its capacity to handle large caseloads.

She graduated from Tulane University Law School and clerked at the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Travis County's process to create a public defender office was spurred, in part, by an April 2018 study from the Council of State Governments that found low-income defendants were more likely to face jail time than those with hired counsel, and that attorneys within the system were underpaid and overworked. 

Last year, commissioners convened a working group made up of private criminal defense attorneys, criminal justice advocates and previously incarcerated people tasked with forming the nascent office.

That group, at times, became fractious.

Criminal defense attorneys within the traditional system pushed for pay raises and more staff; while advocates wanted more resources dedicated to the new office and increased oversight of the traditional system.

Ultimately, the group finalized a plan to submit to county commissioners last summer – one that would have the new public defender office handling 30% of criminal cases involving low-income defendants paid for with both county and state money.

Just after the vote, Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea said she looked forward to Ogunkeyede leading the public defender office.

"This is a very exciting new phase for the county, and I'm very excited about her coming here to head up our brand-new public defender office," Shea said.

Ogunkeyede will formally begin her role as chief public defender in April.

Got a tip? Email Andrew Weber at aweber@kut.org. Follow him on Twitter @England_Weber.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it. Your gift pays for everything you find on KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.

Andrew Weber is a general assignment reporter for KUT, focusing on criminal justice, policing, courts and homelessness in Austin and Travis County. Got a tip? You can email him at aweber@kut.org. Follow him on Twitter @England_Weber.
Related Content