Public defenders are hitting the road to save courthouses money.
Travel is way to help courthouses handle conflicts of interest
Attorney Sean F. Kelly represents clients who can’t afford to pay for an attorney and supervises the other public defenders at the state courthouse on Broad Street in New London.
Once a month or so, under a cost-saving measure implemented a year ago by the Division of Public Defender Services, Kelly drives to the Norwich courthouse, where he handles 20 additional cases of indigent clients.
Attorney Shawn G. Tiernan, who also works in the public defender’s office at the Broad Street courthouse known as Geographical Area 10, occasionally drives to Middletown to represent public defender clients. Another co-worker, attorney Jassette A. Henry, travels to New Haven to serve as the public defender for a client.
The New London Judicial District’s chief public defender, Kevin C. Barrs, who tries major crimes at the Huntington Street courthouse, took on a case in Hartford during the past year. In turn, public defenders from other jurisdictions are coming to Barrs’ court to handle 10 cases that would be conflicts for Barrs and his co-worker M. Fred DeCaprio.
Reminiscent of circuit judges of the past who traveled to multiple jurisdictions to hear cases, the public defenders are leaving their home courts to take on cases that in-house defense lawyers at the other courthouses cannot handle due to conflicts of interest. The classic example of a conflict is when two people are arrested in connection with a bank robbery. The in-house public defenders could not represent both the accused robber and his alleged wheelman, since the codefendants’ interests may be at odds as the case proceeds. Other conflicts occur when the staff attorneys represent or have represented in the past an eyewitness, a victim or a relative of the client.
The vast majority of the conflict cases still are handled by outside attorneys, called “assigned counsel,” who contract with the state, but the division has saved an estimated $1.2 million over the past year by divvying up hundreds of the cases among its own in-house staff.
Some call it the “traveling public defenders” program, but its official name is the inhouse project, according to attorney John Day, director of assigned counsel for the Division of Public Defender services. At the beginning of the year, the 210 staff attorneys who work for the division were given the choice of location and type of case they would like to handle outside of their jurisdiction. In many cases, a state car was available so the state would not incur additional mileage costs. Some public defenders took assignments in courthouses that were closer to their homes than their normal workplaces.
“I can’t say enough about the staff’s willingness to pitch in and be part of the team,” Day said. “I really thought when we first came up with this that people were going to push back.”
Instead, Day said, he’s heard from people that they enjoyed the change of pace.
In the fiscal year that ends June 30, Day said the division spent $23.3 million — nearly a third of its $72 million annual budget — to pay 465 private attorneys to handle cases that could not be taken on by inhouse employees.
The vast majority of conflict cases still are farmed out, and Day said that is not likely to change.
“Everybody was able to figure out, with their schedule, a way to take on more cases,” he said. “We asked each attorney in the division to do a little more work, but we can’t ask them to double their caseload.”
Kelly, the supervisory public defender at GA10, said it can become “a logistical nightmare” when at least one of the staff attorneys is working in another jurisdiction one day a week, but that the program has given the staff the opportunity to try new types of cases with different attorneys and judges.
Despite reports that the crime rate has dropped, the public defenders’ caseload increased by 8.5 percent during the 2015-16 fiscal year, according to the division’s annual report. Public defenders and assigned counsel handled 106,856 criminal cases and 1,181 appeals. Some cases are more time-consuming than others, including those that go to trial and appeals.
The Division of Public Defenders will undergo more changes in upcoming months. Both its chief, Susan O. Storey, and deputy chief, Brian Carlow, will be retiring. On Wednesday, the Connecticut Public Defender Services Commission announced it would be appointing attorney Christine Rapillo, the division’s director of delinquency defense and child protection services, to succeed Storey.
“We asked each attorney in the division to do a little more work, but we can’t ask them to double their caseload.” JOHN DAY, DIRECTOR OF ASSIGNED COUNSEL FOR THE DIVISION OF PUBLIC DEFENDER SERVICES