The July resignation of Andrew Coates as Nevada's chief public defender was abrupt, but not totally unexpected. 

The Office of the State Public Defender represents low-income residents in counties struggling to hire their own public defenders. Heading the office is a demanding and often thankless job, and Coates was the third appointee in a row to leave before completing a full term. 

"It was not a fun job, that's for sure," Coates told The Nevada Independent. He said he was proud of what he accomplished but felt he faced an impossible task, finding attorneys willing to work for little pay on difficult cases in the most remote corners of the state.

During Coates' tenure, judges and other legal professionals raised concerns about his management style, arguing he lacked the leadership skills to oversee an office in dire need of a problem solver. 

The Indy's review of public records and interviews with legal insiders reveal how the state public defender's office is undergoing a transition, with Coates' rocky tenure and sudden departure — which has not been previously reported — capping years of office mismanagement and struggles with recruiting attorneys. 

The Department of Indigent Defense Services (DIDS), the state agency that oversees the office, is hoping to resuscitate it. The department is investing in new initiatives to ensure Nevada's neediest defendants are receiving the legal services they are entitled to under the U.S. Constitution. 

In 2025, the Legislature removed the power to appoint the next chief public defender from the governor's hands. In the spring, the department signed a contract with outside experts to review the office, and now it's tasked them with conducting a nationwide search for a new chief. The department has also already asked the Legislature to boost the pay of the office's attorneys in 2027. 

The office "is in extreme need of revitalization," wrote Peter Handy, the executive director of the board of DIDS, in an email to The Indy. "It's going to take some time and heavy-lifting to get the office to a place where attorneys would like to work."

Stakeholders say Coates — whom Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) appointed state public defender in January 2025 — did not create these issues but likely exacerbated them due to his poor leadership style. Coates told The Indy he was unhappy within a month of starting the job.

"My goal was to kind of stay there longer than the last few people have been there before me," he said. "I did accomplish that."

He quit in July, after multiple judges complained that the office's attorneys were unprepared and after the defense services department had to involve the governor's office on a corrective action plan. 

As the department seeks to strengthen the state public defender's office, the stakes are high. The state's public defenders are a safety net for cash-strapped counties short on attorneys of their own, and advocates warn that vulnerable Nevadans suffer when the office is too weak.

"They haven't had the capacity, or the employees, frankly, to be able to add additional counties in a way that's going to be beneficial to clients in those counties," said Handy.

But Handy and others said they remain optimistic about revamping the office, which has been temporarily helmed since September by veteran attorney Marc Picker, who served as Washoe County's alternate public defender for more than 10 years. In an interview, Picker said raising attorneys' meager salaries would be the most impactful fix but emphasized that greater recognition of the office's importance is also necessary. 

"What I've tried to do is reassure the staff. … We're all in this together, and we're going to work together," he said.

Now hiring: rural attorneys

The state public defender's office was established in 1971 but grew weaker over the decades as many counties — reluctant to fork over a required 80 percent of the costs — opted to find their own public defenders more cheaply. That county-based approach came with its own problems, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada sued in 2017, arguing that the state's rural public defender system was so feeble it was unconstitutional.

Spurred to action by the lawsuit, in 2019 the Legislature formed the Department of Indigent Defense Services to ensure Nevada's public defense system was operating smoothly in rural areas. It tasks the state public defender's office with taking over services in struggling counties and reimburses counties for some of the costs of indigent defense.

Today, six counties, including Washoe and Clark, run their own public defender's offices. Eight counties contract with private attorneys and two, Humboldt and White Pine, rely on the state public defender's office. The office also provides appellate and parole representation to some counties.

Advocates say the creation of the department injected crucial money, oversight and political urgency into Nevada's patchwork indigent defense system. But it hasn't solved the most stubborn issue: recruitment.

It's hard enough for rural counties to find attorneys in general, said district attorneys, judges and lawyers from rural areas who spoke with The Indy. It's almost impossible to find attorneys interested in working for the state public defender, a small office that worked on roughly 1,300 cases last year and that usually employs just a handful of full-time attorneys.

Experts say it's simple math: Attorneys make more money by individually signing contracts with counties to provide part-time indigent defense than by taking a full-time job with the state office, in part because it allows them to take on work through their private practices. 

"Why would you stay with the state public defender when you could get a contract with a county that pays you more and gives you more freedom?" asked defense attorney David Schieck, who on behalf of the state monitors indigent defense services in five rural counties, in an interview. 

The state's public defenders also earn far less than those employed by counties.

The state public defender makes a maximum of $141,000 a year. The salary for the top public defender in Clark County is $181,000 and in Washoe County is $193,000, and the maximum is $267,000 in Clark and $271,000 in Washoe.

There are other barriers to recruitment, including location. The state has struggled to find full-time public defenders eager to live in rural counties, which means employees spend extra time and money commuting. 

Stakeholders also said rural county leaders are sometimes hesitant about the state attorneys.

"If they're not going to live here, they don't have any connection to the community. … It's a factor on the quality of representation," said Judge Steven Dobrescu, who serves on the judicial district court that covers White Pine County. 

Rural attorneys who provide indigent defense via contracts aren't perfect, said Dobrescu, but "those are people appearing here every day. … And if there was a problem, we bring a lawyer in and talk to them about it." 

Coates said he believed county judges weren't the most welcoming to state public defenders, a dynamic he argued made his job harder.

"The county judges don't really want external lawyers coming in, because maybe they have less of a relationship with them," Coates said.

Dobrescu pushed back on this, writing in a statement that "we have historically welcomed and encouraged attorneys to our district."

Aditi Goel, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, said it's not uncommon for counties to lose faith when their states have weak public defender offices.

"The state puts itself out there to be a safety net and it turns out the safety net can't be relied on," Goel said. "So it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of, 'We can't rely on the state.'"

Leadership vacuum

Those familiar with Nevada's approach to public defense say the issues go beyond recruitment. The state office has also been crippled by inconsistent and absent leadership, which advocates said has exacerbated the problems and prevented the office from building institutional knowledge and tackling crises effectively. 

"The Nevada State Public Defender is not only understaffed but also lacks basic protocols to ensure ethical representation, compliance with performance standards, and training and supervision of newer attorneys," wrote UNLV law professor Eve Hanan, who serves as the court-appointed monitor of the state's indigent defense system, in a June report.

Coates' troubled tenure made the perils of weak leadership clear, according to public meeting minutes and interviews with those familiar with the office. He was the third appointee in a row to leave well before their four-year terms ended. Coates' predecessor, fellow Lombardo appointee Patty Cafferata, resigned after six months on the job amid controversy and after DIDS board members raised concerns about her performance. 

Coates was Lombardo's deputy general counsel at the time of his appointment and previously practiced indigent defense through a contract with Nye County.

Handy, the DIDS executive director, said it became clear soon after Coates' appointment that he wasn't the best fit, although he emphasized that the issues went beyond Coates. 

The office was short-staffed and frequently in churn before Coates took the role. But turnover worsened during his tenure, with four attorneys — the majority of the office — resigning or being terminated since last July. 

In April, his office realized two days before a trial in White Pine County that it had a major conflict of interest: It was representing a man accused of assaulting his wife while also representing the wife in separate proceedings against him.

After that, Handy said, "It was clear … they weren't doing appropriate conflict checks."

Soon after, in May, Handy launched an investigation into the state public defender's office and began working with the governor's team on a corrective action plan. The investigation was aimed at "system problems," Handy said, not Coates' leadership.

The investigation revealed many of the office's problems were structural. There was apparently no office policy guiding how state public defenders cross-checked for conflicts on cases, and other protocols — including on issues as basic as maintaining trial calendars — had not been updated since 2012, if they existed at all. 

The vacuum in top-down policies has affected vulnerable clients in White Pine and Humboldt counties. One client missed the first day of their own jury trial in June after not hearing from their attorney for two weeks. Some clients have had attorneys reassigned five times. And some staff members with the state office have reached out to judges repeatedly asking for updates on the office's own cases.

Clients who want to reach attorneys in person also face limited options. Until recent hiring shifts, state attorneys only stayed in Ely during alternating weeks every month. Because the Ely office lacked a legal secretary, it closed when attorneys weren't in town.

"Not having staff present … interfered with the ability of individuals to contact their attorneys," said Shieck. "Most people who need indigent defenders don't have email, phones — they needed simpler contact points."

None of these problems were solely Coates' fault, Handy and others told The Indy, stressing that the office suffers from years of neglect and a dysfunctional culture. But, he said, Coates also lacked the vision to tackle such problems.

Coates said the defense services department had unrealistic expectations, saying their attitude was "why aren't you accomplishing these lofty goals, and, you know, why can't this just be done with the snap of a finger?"

The office did update its protocols, Coates said, and blamed any failure to notice conflicts on individual lawyers rather than office practice. But he also said the department fretted over these smaller-scale issues, without acknowledging the much larger battle he was fighting on recruitment.

Coates quit in July.

"Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they phase the office out," he said. "The simple reality is, you just can't recruit the type of attorneys that they want."

A new vision

In part because of Coates' tenure, the state public defender's office is undergoing a series of changes — from updated protocols to annual performance reviews to travel stipends for attorneys — which advocates describe as first steps in rehabilitating the office. The Legislature also passed SB407 last May, transferring the authority to appoint the state public defender from the governor to the DIDS executive director.

There's a nationwide search going for a new chief defender. Picker, the temporary chief, has accelerated hiring, bringing on two full-time attorneys who live in Humboldt County and another full-time attorney who commutes from Las Vegas to White Pine County. 

Picker has also met with rural judges, including Dobrescu, who said he was impressed with the new vision. Coates made limited visits to rural counties during his tenure, including only one to White Pine.

The changes go beyond the state public defender's office. The Department of Indigent Defense Services also wants an overhaul. 

This spring, the National Association for Public Defense began a review of the entire department. Staffers on the project are interviewing stakeholders across rural counties and communicating with states that also take a county-based approach to indigent defense — such as Michigan — to find ways to improve Nevada's system. 

The department has its eye on the next legislative session, where it will push to increase state public defenders' salaries to be competitive with those of county public defenders. 

Despite these efforts, advocates say strengthening the office will be a yearslong fight.

"It's a typical state of Nevada thing," said Chris Giunchigliani, a former Clark County commissioner and department board member. "We do things on the cheap, and then we're shocked — shocked — when we can't find someone that actually can do the job."