Complaints about a lack of available interpreters are common in the downtown courthouse, sometimes delaying cases for people in custody and frazzling interpreters asked to cover more hearings than they can handle.

The staff shortage is often felt hardest by those most at risk of an unfair outcome in the court system: the mentally ill, non-English speakers and lower-income litigants. The caseload crisis boiled over this year during a March training session, when the former head of the mental health unit, Christina Behle, “advised members NOT to declare doubts” about the competency of defendants, according to a written grievance filed by the union representing public defenders that was obtained by The Times. The building is home to a “very tiny lockup” that overcrowds easily, often causing case dates to be pushed back while public defenders sift through a to-do list that is hundreds of defendants deep, attorneys said. Mentally ill defendants arrested on low-level misdemeanors often find themselves languishing in jail as they wait for a date in the Hollywood court, according to public defenders who have worked in the courthouse in recent years, some whom spoke on the condition of anonymity over fear of reprisals from their employer. Public defenders who work in Hollywood’s decrepit mental health courthouse say they’re juggling at least 500 cases each, a situation so out of control that their boss allegedly proposed a radical solution earlier this year: stop declaring doubts about the ability of their mentally ill clients to stand trial.

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