The screening happens fast, usually at arraignment, sometimes in a hallway outside the courtroom with a clerk holding a clipboard. A form goes across the counter, the numbers get filled in, and a judge either signs the order appointing counsel or does not. Almost nobody reads the form closely, which is understandable at nine in the morning on the worst week of the year. It is worth reading anyway, because the questions on it decide something that is difficult to revisit, and because a few of the answers carry consequences that arrive months later at sentencing.
1. The screening form is a sworn financial statement
Washington courts screen for indigency under the criminal rules, CrR 3.1 in superior court and CrRLJ 3.1 in the district and municipal courts where most impaired driving cases live. The form asks for income, dependents, assets, monthly obligations, and often for the equity in a vehicle or a home. It is signed under penalty of perjury, and the court can require documentation: pay stubs, a recent Form 1040, a bank statement. A careful reader checks whether the form asks for gross or net income, whether it counts a spouse's earnings, and whether the anticipated cost of a defense is a separate question. Those three distinctions move more cases than the headline number does.
2. The income threshold is a floor, not a ceiling
RCW 10.101.010 defines indigency several ways at once. Receipt of certain public assistance qualifies automatically. So does income at or below a set percentage of the federal poverty guidelines, a figure the statute states and the guidelines update annually. But the statute also reaches a person whose income is above that line and who still lacks sufficient funds to obtain counsel, which is the category that actually catches most DUI defendants: employed, housed, and nowhere near able to write a four-figure retainer check. There is a middle status too, indigent and able to contribute, in which counsel is appointed and a partial payment is ordered.
3. Caseload standards describe the time your attorney is supposed to have
Washington is unusual in having enforceable numbers. The state Supreme Court adopted Standards for Indigent Defense that cap annual caseloads per full-time attorney, with the misdemeanor figure long set at 400 cases, or 300 where a court has adopted case weighting, and 150 for felonies. Counsel certifies compliance to the court. Those figures have been under revision, with the court approving a phased reduction that lowers the caps over several years, so the applicable number depends on when the case is filed and which county is doing the appointing. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracks indigent defense delivery nationally, and the standards are the reason a reader can ask a concrete question: how many open cases does this attorney carry right now?
4. Appointment is not always free at the end
RCW 10.101.050 permits a court to order recoupment of the cost of appointed counsel from a convicted defendant. Two things limit it. The order cannot be imposed on someone the court finds indigent under the statute at the time of sentencing, and the legislature has narrowed legal financial obligations substantially in recent sessions, eliminating several costs that used to attach automatically. The practical result is that recoupment shows up most often for defendants screened as able to contribute, or for those whose finances improved during the case. Ask, before sentencing, what the county's hourly or flat rate for appointed counsel is, because that is the number a recoupment order multiplies.
5. What a fee agreement buys that an appointment order does not
Appointed counsel in Washington is licensed, supervised, and bound by the same rules of professional conduct as any private attorney, and in impaired driving practice many appointed lawyers have tried more breath test suppression motions than the private bar in the same county. What the fee buys is different: choice of the individual attorney, a written scope with named investigators and experts, and control over pace, including money for an independent blood retest or a defense expert on the breath instrument. Appointed cases can get expert funding through an ex parte motion, but it is a motion, not a line in a contract.
If the screening goes against you, ask the court what specific finding it made and whether reconsideration is available on a fuller financial statement. If it goes for you, get the appointed attorney's name in writing that day, along with a phone number and the office's policy on returning calls. Both answers are easier to obtain at the counter than three weeks later.