To dramatize his cry for help, he drafted the governor himself, assigning him as counsel for an indigent man charged with assault. “It strikes me that I should begin with the one attorney in the state who not only created this problem, but is in a unique position to address it,” Mr. Barrett wrote in a letter to Mr. Nixon, who is a former state attorney general. Mr. Nixon’s office replied that Mr. Barrett had no such authority because a drafted lawyer’s cooperation is required under the law. While there undoubtedly are plenty of well-paid statehouse lawyers to debate that point, Mr. Barrett has succeeded in alerting the public to a critical problem that Mr. Nixon has failed to address during his seven years in office. He has rebuffed legislative budget increases across the last several years.

The public defender commission, which oversees the office, is currently suing the governor for vetoing legislatively approved budget increases. The state, which ranks near last in the nation in funding public defenders, has 376 attorneys in an office that needs an additional 270 lawyers to meet basic professional standards, according to a 2014 study.

The office caseload went up 12 percent with 82,000 defendants in the past year. This left staff members handling up to 200 cases each, and averaging about 27 fewer hours per case than is considered necessary for effective representation.

This situation is unconscionable. In Mr. Nixon’s first year in office, a university study warned that the public defender’s caseload was a crisis that had pushed the state’s criminal justice system “to the brink of collapse.” It’s nearer the brink than ever, and Mr. Nixon would be wise to see firsthand the injustice done to to indigent defendants by accepting Mr. Barrett’s assignment.