The judge in the Blacksher case rejected the public defender’s pleas not to be forced to take it. “It flies in the face of our Constitution,” Judge John S. Waters told his Christian County courtroom here last month. “It flies in the face of our culture. It flies in the face of the reason we came over here 300 and some-odd years ago to get out of debtors’ prison.”

“I’m not saying the public defenders aren’t overworked,” Judge Waters said, but, “I don’t know how to move his case and how to provide him what the law of the land provides.”

But last Friday, the Missouri Supreme Court issued an order temporarily rescinding the assignment of public defenders in Mr. Blacksher’s case, at least until the court can consider legal briefs on the question of the public defenders’ latest demand to refuse cases.

Mr. Blacksher’s case, which could now be delayed for several months, has become the center of a debate that long predates it in this state. To some, the signs of stress on the public defender system here have become overwhelming, even frightening: almost all the public defenders’ 35 trial division offices lately carried caseloads that would require more than the total number of staff hours available in a month  in some cases, more than two times the hours available, said Cat Kelly, deputy director for the Missouri State Public Defender System.

“Missouri’s public defender system has reached a point where what it provides is often nothing more than the illusion of a lawyer,” an outside report asked for by the Missouri Bar concluded last year.

Yet some county prosecutors here are deeply skeptical of the defenders’ complaints. With the state facing $550 million less in general fund revenues than a year ago, they say, defenders are no more burdened than the next department.

“They say this every year,” said Ron Cleek, the prosecuting attorney in Christian County, which includes Ozark, adding that he wondered whether some at the defenders offices might “want to think about what time they come in and when they go home.”