get your own lawyer

I’m a public defender

That means that I provide criminal defense to people who can’t afford to hire their own lawyer for their case. The large majority of my clients are unemployed, on disability or working for minimum wage. Even my drug dealer clients are usually broke because they are just selling crack or weed on a small-time basis and probably averaging out to about five bucks an hour for their troubles.

In order to have a public defender appointed, a defendant needs to fill out an application, under oath, as to his financial situation. If he is sufficiently broke, he is declared indigent and a PD is appointed.

There are two loopholes in the system, however. First, there is no checking or verification of an application – not even a credit report. Second, if a person is in jail at the time of the application, he is automatically indigent.

This means that we get a statistically significant number of clients who are not only not indigent, but make considerably more money that I do. I recently had a client who was able to pay off his $15,000 fine in a single payment. I have had several clients who signed an application form stating that they had no income, no job, and no savings. But when I interview them they start telling me about their great job making $20/hr or more, or how their rich great uncle just left them $200,000 in his will a few months ago.

I have clients who make $680/month on SSI, but somehow can afford to drive a tricked-out Escalade or a BMW M5. I have young clients, 17-20 years old, whose parents are, if not wealthy, at least comfortable.

This is a real problem. We are spending a lot of time working cases for people who can, and should, be hiring their own lawyers. I practice in a micropolitan area and there are several very good private attorneys who do primarily (or only) criminal defense in the area. Most of these attorneys will do outstanding work and will not beggar their clients in the process.

When someone is perfectly capable of hiring her own attorney for her case, but hires the public defender office instead, she is damaging the system. She is taking time away from someone who really is indigent and really cannot afford an attorney.

I typically have about 150 open cases at any given time. These will range from traffic offenses up to rape and murder. We have one investigator, two secretaries and two paralegals to work for nine attorneys. We have virtually no budget for outside investigators or expert witnesses or anything else. We simply do not have the time or the resources to give the kind of attention to cases that a private, paid attorney can provide.

For example: the police in this circuit are, for the most part, pretty bad at doing field sobriety tests. I do not have the money to hire an expert to tell the jury how screwed up the FSTs were. Sure, I can do a pretty good cross exam, but in the end the cop just tells the jury that his “training and experience” tell him that the driver was drunk. A private attorney – especially a DUI specialist – can hire an expert to explain why the FST were done so badly that the cop had no probable cause to arrest, and at least have a chance at getting the Intoxylizer results suppressed.

A private attorney can hire a traffic engineer to explain to the jury why the intersection is so badly designed that car wrecks are unavoidable and the crash in which you crippled another driver is not really your fault.

A private attorney can hire a private investigator to go out and find witnesses who can support your “I was drinking at the bar” alibi

If you can possibly find a way to hire an attorney, do so. Sell your BMW and buy a Ford. Use the difference to hire someone to defend you. We public defenders are good at our job – we believe in what we do and we work hard at it. But we are spread too thin. Leave us to work on the cases for people who really need us.