South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Low pay keeping lawyers away from public service
When recent law school graduates apply to become an assistant state attorney or assistant public defender, they do not have any illusions that it will make them rich. They sign up for public service because they want to make a difference in the criminal justice system and in our community.
But today, our criminal justice system is facing a serious labor problem: The attorneys who labor to make the justice system work are leaving public service faster than we can hire and train new lawyers to replace them. The great resignation that has impacted every industry in the nation has also drastically affected career public service attorneys.
Rent and home prices have soared in South Florida, while recent law school graduates carry an average student loan debt of $160,000. The starting salary for an assistant state attorney and assistant public defender in Broward County — where the cost of living is increasingly high — is $50,000. This is far below the national average for entry-level prosecutors and assistant public defenders, which is $66,802 and $61,087 respectively, according to Biglaw Investor and Payscale.com.
Many attorneys in our offices are first-generation college graduates and attorneys, as are we. Our attorneys are dedicated and want to serve. They recognize that by choosing public service they would forgo the trappings of a lucrative legal career to serve the community of Broward.
We started our careers as an assistant state attorney and an assistant public defender and endured the financial sacrifice to serve. Today, public service attorneys on both sides of the courtroom are still struggling to maintain a roof over their heads as rent skyrockets in Broward. Yet despite the low salary, our attorneys work tirelessly and strive to ensure just and equitable criminal justice outcomes for this community.
Our responsibilities as Broward County’s public defender and state attorney may be different, but our need for experienced and dedicated lawyers is the same. It is essential to the mission of the state attorney to have seasoned prosecutors ready to litigate and pursue serious crimes. Case outcomes should not be
By Harold F. Pryor delayed for the accused or for the victims. In the interest of justice, experienced and dedicated attorneys are also vital to the mission of the public defender, who strives to ensure that the innocent are protected and that the Constitution rings true for all who appear before the courts — not only by defending the accused, but also by breathing life into our constitutional protections.
The work of assistant state attorneys and assistant public defenders must be preserved and protected. We must not ignore the sacrifice of the people who work in these noble professions. Attorneys who labor in the courtrooms, strengthen the fabric that holds our society together. The work of justice is vitally important and must be supported.
As we ask our attorneys to do more with less, manage large caseloads and work though the pandemic backlog, we must also remain competitive with the private sector. The value in the experience and dedication of our attorneys is invaluable, thus we must establish a more realistic pay scale to recruit and retain them. We must raise our salaries for attorneys to closer match the tremendous responsibilities we ask them to bear, recognizing the cost-of-living challenges in South Florida.
As they craft the coming year’s state budget, our leaders in Tallahassee have the opportunity to address a growing problem in the criminal justice system and ensure that these essential workers are adequately compensated.
Harold F. Pryor is state attorney for Broward County, and Gordon Weekes is Broward County’s public defender.
Don’t blame officer for dirt-bike tragedy
Re: Hundreds honor the life, mourn the death of Stanley Davis III, young dirt bike rider from Boynton Beach
The death of Stanley Davis lll was a terrible tragedy, and blaming the officer following him is also tragic.
Anyone riding a motorcycle not equipped with items like rear-view mirrors or brake lights is taking dangerous chances. The real villains here are the parents. Not monitoring their son’s driving on city streets instead of insisting that it be on an off-road setting was the main reason he died. It was well within intelligent concern for an officer to carefully intercept the child and inform him of the dangers and temporarily take the bike off the road and admonish his parents for not exercising better parenting.
Fort Lauderdale
Hiding behind Marsy’s Law
I’ve been a subscriber for over 20 years and receive your paper daily. I’m very disturbed by your reporting on the death of Stanley Davis III during a chase by Boynton Beach police.
While I don’t condone the actions of this young man, I thought your policy was to not publish names of underage children involved in incidents with law enforcement. I’ve noticed you readily publish the names of underage Black children, while withholding the names of white children. What bothers me more about your reports of this incident is that police have not released the name of the officer, citing Marsy’s Law, a voter-approved amendment that allows crime victims to shield their names and personal information from the public.
How is the officer a victim? Why haven’t you challenged the Boynton Beach police with the obvious misuse of this law? I don’t see anything in your reporting to challenge this with the police, or questioning their motives of hiding behind a law intended for victims.
Boca Raton
(Editor’s Note: Sun Sentinel content director for breaking news Kathy Laskowski responds. Providing accurate, relevant and unbiased information is the key to our reporting. Questions posed by this letter are valid, for which we seek answers. At no point do we allow the race of an individual to divert our pursuit of the truth, nor do we let it dictate the publication of identities of victims or perpetrators).
Praise for DeSantis
Thank you, Sun Sentinel, for accurate statistics of Florida’s death rate from the Omicron variant. I credit our governor for having policies in place to manage this pandemic while allowing us to live our lives and work and send children to schools.
The writer makes comparisons to the Delta variant and its “horrific” death toll. Acquired resistance and vaccination rates may be helping, as the writer states. Falling short of the possibility of herd immunity contributing to the low death rate, the writer shows the strength of our state in dealing with this virus. Thank you, Gov. DeSantis, for your hard work in managing this pandemic.
Boynton Beach
Science vs. stupid
We’ve been full-time residents of FloriDUH for almost 25 years, and have seen more than our share of “DUHs.” Not to be outdone, Gov. DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo have seen fit, despite their total lack of expertise in infectious disease, to create a health crisis. Florida was inundated with visitors from every state and country, from Thanksgiving through the New Year, happily availing themselves of all we offer, especially the freedom to not be masked.
As the CDC expected, our numbers are off the charts, hospitals are again overrun, and doctors’ offices are being decimated by this extremely transmissible strain. DeSantis is a highly educated Navy veteran whose credo is to never leave anyone behind, yet he allowed thousands of Floridians to die in his unbridled quest to emulate Trump and be a presidential candidate.
Monoclonal antibodies, nutrition, Vitamin C — are you for real? For otherwise healthy people, that’s a terrific regimen, but against COVID? If it were that simple, wouldn’t the pandemic be gone? Don’t be lemmings and follow DeSantis and Ladapo off a cliff. Control your lives, and have consideration for others. Science saves lives, stupid destroys them.
Delray Beach