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Imagine you are responsible for providing legal representation for indigent people in your state (the public defender's office). Seven years ago, a request for additional funding to meet increased case load was vetoed. Your budget was cut in 2015 and now the governor's office is recommending further cuts. Making things worse is the fact that the number of cases has increased 12%. What would you do?
The Director of the Missouri Public Defender System came up with a novel approach to help meet the increased caseload burden and sent a letter to the Governor (PDF) compelling him to work cases.
Additional reporting here, here, and here.
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Missouri Governor Fails to Fund Public Defender's Office so They Compel him to Work Cases
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @06:12PM
Nope. The PD office is an executive branch. So you have one executive telling another what to do.
"In 1982, a house bill amended the system with the creation of the Office of State Public Defender (OSPD) as an independent department of the judicial branch of state government." [mo.gov] So no... the PD office is the Judicial branch.
So yes, you do have the Judicial branch telling the Executive branch what to do... or more specifically trying to compel them to do something.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @07:04PM
Except that 600.019 makes it an independent department covered by Chapter 536. They have been delegated executive power, and can use all powers delegated to them. The Governor doesn't like it, he can challenge it the same way you challenge any other abuse of agency power.