Chief public defender suspended
She allegedly ordered downloads of her critics’ email files
The commission that controls the state public defender service on Friday suspended division chief Tashun Bowden-lewis after months of dispute over her resistance to its oversight and disclosures this week that she ordered a subordinate to access and download files from privileged email accounts belonging to her critics.
The suspension was imposed at what was a relatively short and focused commission meeting when compared to the protracted sessions over the last year, when public defenders attended in groups to complain about her management, and less frequently, when her allies attended to complain she was being unfairly criticized.
“The commission has decided to place the chief public defender on administrative leave with pay immediately pending investigation by the commission into certain behavior that if confirmed could be grounds for disciplinary action,” commission Chairman Richard N. Palmer said.
The commission went into an executive session to discuss “personnel matters,” Palmer said.
The commission made Deputy Chief Public Defender John Day the acting chief.
Bowden-lewis left without commenting.
The commission also lifted discipline Bowden-lewis imposed earlier in the week on two employees unwittingly ensnared by the email scandal: Information Technology Director Gregory Dion and
Legal Counsel Deborah Del Prete Sullivan.
Superior Court Judge Sheila Prats, who was a public defender for about 20 years before becoming a judge, said she was saddened by having to vote to suspend Bowden Lewis.
“It is with a really heavy heart that I voted today to put Tashun on (administrative) leave but it
is based on what I had seen and heard over the past year,” Prats said.
Several division officials familiar with the events of the last week said the commission had been considering removing Bowdenlewis for what its members viewed as her repeated management failures and refusal to comply with its directives. Disclosure about her intrusion into the email accounts hastened the process, they said.
The officials said Bowden-lewis instructed a junior member of Dion’s staff to access and download documents from email accounts controlled by Sullivan and Joseph Lopez, who runs the division’s complex litigation unit. Both are viewed by colleagues to have been critical of Bowden-lewis.
Dion detected what he believed was the unauthorized email access, learned from his employee that it had been done on Bowden-lewis’ instructions and notified the two targets. Sullivan, in turn, notified Bowden-lewis and asked for an explanation. Among the materials downloaded from Sullivan’s account was a document critical of Bowden-lewis that had been prepared for Palmer by a former division employee. Sullivan serves as the commission’s legal counsel, as well as division counsel.
After the email disclosures, Bowden-lewis suspended Dion, telling him he had been performing duties beyond his responsibility. She issued
Sullivan a reprimand, but its purported justification has not been disclosed
Over the year and a half she has been chief public defender, Bowden-lewis’ leadership of the agency that provides legal services to the state’s indigent has been marked by confrontation and infighting. As the commission was issuing her suspension, the union representing rank and file lawyers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a no confidence vote in her leadership.
The Connecticut Public Defender Attorneys Union, represented by AFSCME Local 381, said the vote was 121-9. “While we have made concerted efforts over the past year to work with the Chief, the perpetual state of controversy and dysfunction at the highest levels has been an unwelcome distraction in serving the interests of our clients,” the union said in an email.
“We urge the Commission to provide Attorney Bowden-lewis with the appropriate due process protections that all public defenders champion every day and, if there is just cause, remove her from her position as Chief so that the Division can refocus its efforts on our mission to provide the best possible legal defense to the people of Connecticut.”
Bowden-lewis’ appointment as the first Black woman to lead the agency was greeted across the division as a milestone in diversity. But she emerged as a divisive figure because of what colleagues call a preoccupation with matters of race and a record of retaliating against those who disagreed with her — both in the agency and on successive commissions.
She took the position that, as chief public defender, she controlled all aspects of the division’s work, with the commission responsible for little more than approving her decisions. Two separate commissions have been in office since her appointment and both disagreed, pointing to state law giving them the last word on hiring, spending and policy.
The first commission, the one that appointed Bowden-lewis, resigned as a group a year ago, following a disagreement over the appointment of a director of human resources. Bowden-lewis recommended a Black woman, but the commission concluded the chief ’s candidate was not qualified and appointed a more experienced white woman.
The commission resigned when Bowden-lewis retained a lawyer, implied the commission’s treatment of her was discriminatory and threatened to sue. It was the fist of three such letters her employment lawyer delivered to two commissions. In one, Bowden-lewis accused Palmer of racial bias because he directed a question about division finances to the finance director, who is white, rather that to her or an Asian-american employee.
Palmer’s commission was hastily appointed to replace the resigning members of the first and instructed to restore order to a constitutionally important agency of 450 or so that was being splintered by internal disagreement over Bowdenlewis’ management, policy and spending decisions.
In some cases, the groups supporting and opposing Bowdenlewis were divided by race, several division employees have said.
Among other things, Bowdenlewis wanted to expand the division’s mission from legal defense to areas such as providing family unification, employment and mental health services to people who are released from prison. To do so, she wanted to redesign the offices, create a public affairs unit to promote her mission and distribute promotional materials in urban neighborhoods to raise the division’s profile.
Among other things, she also wanted to spend money on what became known as “swag,” such as blankets bearing a new division logo she paid to have designed.
She also said the agency needs to redouble efforts to hire Black lawyers because, among other things, Black clients are not comfortable with white lawyers who don’t understand their culture.
Critics emerged in the agency who said Bowden was neglecting the division’s core mission. They complained that she was spending tens of thousands of dollars on an office redesign and promotion at a time when dozens of positions were unfilled and the agency was returning millions of dollars to the state general fund as unspent surplus.
As interoffice disagreements grew, Bowden-lewis’ critics said she implied those who challenged her were motivated by racial bias.
Bowden-lewis’ resistance to commission authority was apparent last summer in an email exchange with Palmer, who had spoken with the finance director and had questions on what he thought were significant increases in the costs of the office redesign and the promotional “swag.”
It ended with an Aug. 17 email in which Bowden-lewis accused Palmer of an “unprecedented” and “unwarranted” infringement of her authority as agency head.
“Yes, I will follow your directive,” she wrote. “No, I will not stop doing what is right for my agency, our clients, and the communities we serve. This is my career. This is my passion. This is my life’s work. This is how I provide for my family. As you volunteer in this position, as you listen to others, and make decisions without talking to me and trying to find a middle ground please remember that the day to day operations of this Division will continue.”
“Yes, I will follow your directive,” she concluded. “No, I will not stop.”