NORFOLK, Va. — Defense attorneys in Virginia, both court-appointed and public defenders, are struggling to keep up with the amount of police body camera video they have to review.
The Virginian-Pilot reports the wave of body camera adoption across the state has mostly happened without considering the attorneys ethically bound to review the thousands of hours of captured video.
The newspaper says the workload is causing some public defender's offices to lose attorneys faster than usual. Localities without public defender's offices rely on court-appointed attorneys, leaving those attorneys to juggle their own practices and public defense cases.
The workload also delays cases as attorneys request additional time to review videos. The newspaper says attorneys generally aren't advocating for less body camera footage, but instead more state funding to lighten the workload.