Exodus from AG’s office is raising questions
Staff churn under Neronha has led to court delays
PROVIDENCE — A Woonsocket couple is suing the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, accusing the agency of violating their civil rights by failing to disclose that their four adopted children had suffered rampant sexual abuse before they welcomed the siblings into their home.
They are devastating allegations — which the state has denied — that have been playing out in U.S. District Court over the last two years. Until recently, the case was being litigated by two of the top civil lawyers in the attorney general’s office: Brenda Baum and Chrisanne Wyrzykowski, deputy chiefs of the civil unit.
In recent months, both Baum and Wyrzykowski left the office they’d worked at for more than a decade, along with a third civil lawyer, Beth Landes. With that, Baum, Wyrzykowski and Landes joined the steady stream of lawyers walking out the door over the last three years.
Turnover in the office — which has seen almost the entire Civil Division depart in the last three years — is affecting how cases are proceeding in federal court, causing discovery delays and resulting in lawyers being assigned to complex cases on short notice and scrambling to get up to speed.
“We’ve been working through it,” U.S. District Judge William E. Smith said. “Hopefully, they have resolved the problem, but time will tell.”
A spokesman for Attorney General Peter F. Neronha’s office said that Neronha had offered to meet to address any concerns, but that Smith indicated it wasn’t necessary.
U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. said he categorized the state’s representation as “top-notch” in his conversation with Neronha, but acknowledged that he had not polled the other judges on the bench about procedural issues.
What’s behind the exodus of lawyers?
Since Neronha took office in early 2019, the department has seen high turnover, particularly among some of
its most seasoned lawyers, records requests and analysis by The Providence Journal shows.
More than 150 employees have departed in the last three years, and a dozen more lost their jobs with the change in administration. Of those, 79 were lawyers, either special assistant attorneys general, assistant attorneys general or deputy chiefs.
While experts say the legal system — like many professions — is experiencing high turnover nationwide, particularly since the COVID pandemic, the exact cause of the lawyer exodus remains murky.
Some of those who resigned have taken lateral positions in other state agencies. Others became judges or went into private practice. A few took corporate jobs. Still others retired or left to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A few even took sizeable pay cuts in leaving, including Michael W. Field, the longtime face of open records requests and a deputy chief of the attorney general’s Civil Division. He left the office to become a senior law clerk to state Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg. He took a $77,000 pay hit. Field declined to comment for this article through a courts spokesperson.
Brenda Baum, also a civil deputy chief, likewise took a $44,000 pay cut when she joined the state Department of Corrections as the deputy chief of legal services, with a base salary of $110,979, or $122,076 with longevity, according to corrections spokesman J.R. Ventura.
When asked about the turnover, the attorney general’s office, through spokesman Brian Hodge, said such movement is normal, and the organization, like many others, is in a constant state of hiring as employees head out the door.
But several lawyers who left the office, when contacted by The Journal, described a culture of mismanagement, strict top-down leadership from Neronha and his leadership team, and an environment in which their experience wasn’t valued and questions weren’t tolerated. They reported feeling sidelined and mistreated.
And the turnover is having an impact on cases, which are delayed as prosecutors leave and new ones are assigned.
In an office that typically sees little movement, relative newcomers suddenly are finding themselves in senior positions.
Budget fight with governor
More than a dozen of the resignations came after Neronha engaged in a high-profile spat with Gov. Dan McKee over staffing earlier this year. Neronha requested $2 million to hire 20 new staffers and create a cold-case unit, but the governor failed to include it in his budget.
Neronha then waged an aggressive social media campaign, asserting that his office wasn’t getting the resources it deserved. He met with state House and Senate leaders to press his case. In the end, state legislators granted him 15 of the 20 positions by allotting him $1.9 million in legal fees from the Purdue Pharma opioid settlement.
Earlier this year, the office rehired two longtime prosecutors, one whom Neronha let go upon taking office and one who was placed on leave and then resigned.
“This Office for some time has had a need for experienced trial attorneys able to handle significant cases independently, as several such attorneys from this Office have become judges or magistrates or gone on to private practice,” Hodge said in an email in March.
Another seasoned prosecutor was recently asked to return to the office after she left to join a different state agency.
The office demoted another longtime prosecutor, Peter Roklan, after he gave notice.
According to Hodge, Neronha designated Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein, previously a special assistant attorney general, as an assistant attorney general to ensure continuity of office operations after his surgery in May.
The number of assistant attorney general assignments is limited by statute.
“With the knowledge that Peter Roklan was set to join the United States Attorney’s Office, and in consultation and agreement with Peter, we assigned his AAG designation to the Deputy Attorney General,” Hodge said in an email.
Fears of retaliation
The Journal reached out to more than 20 lawyers who left the office, but not one would speak on the record, for fear of retaliation and worry about compromising their new positions, particularly if Neronha is elected governor. He’s been a vocal critic of McKee and has continued to raise money, fueling political speculation.
“It’s hard to respond to unnamed and unspecified complaints, but of course we value good management and experience. It is because we appreciate experience that we have successfully recruited and retained experienced attorneys to the top management positions in the office,” Hodge said.
Hodge emphasized, too, that Neronha feels strongly that “the way it’s always been done” does not dictate how the office should operate. That type of approach led to a backlog of thousands of felony cases Neronha inherited, he said.
“Respectfully, in an office of nearly 250 people, it is inevitable that some people aren’t going to see things eye-toeye with those responsible for managing. We strive to have an open-door policy and welcome feedback and candid conversations with our staff. But sometimes, there are just different perspectives,” Hodge continued.
Resignation letters produced in response to an open records request primarily express gratitude for the opportunity to work in the office on behalf of Rhode Islanders and admiration for their colleagues’ dedication and hard work.
‘A frustrating environment’
Defense lawyers say the departures are being felt at the courthouses, where lawyers short on experience are taking on cases.
“The high turnover amongst prosecutors makes it very difficult for the system to function efficiently. There’s a constant new learning curve that makes it very hard to reach a resolution in cases,” said Andrew Horwitz, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law.
Horwitz said he’s observed a higher frequency of new prosecutors learning the ropes, making them less inclined to exercise their discretion and more frightened on the job due to inexperience.
“My impression, based on what I see in court, is line-level prosecutors are not given the authority to resolve cases in a way they see as just and appropriate,” Horwitz said. “It seems like there is a requirement in the office to get permission to resolve a case in a way that is innovative or creative or different from the cookie-cutter approach.”
“That is a frustrating environment in which to work as a prosecutor,” he added.
Attorney general takes to social media
Since The Journal filed an Access to Public Records request on Oct. 19 seeking an accounting of the staff departures during Neronha’s administration, the attorney general has taken to social media with a barrage of posts announcing new hires and touting his staff.
“Our Office is growing, as we continue to attract more and more talented people that are passionate about delivering results on behalf of Rhode Islanders. The guy in the middle was hired in 2019, not sure how he snuck into the picture,” read one from the office on Oct. 25.
In another post, he highlighted the honors program, an initiative in which recent law school grads work for the office for a year with the potential to be hired permanently.
“The office grows and reinvents itself constantly. And gets ever stronger,” came also on Oct. 25.
Questions have been raised in the legal community about whether the fellows and other new hires are licensed to practice law in Rhode Island. A halfdozen are awaiting bar admission.
“Consistent with the Rules of Professional Conduct, they have been working in the Office under the supervision of barred attorneys, while their admission is pending. This is how the legal profession attracts top talent coming out of law school,” Hodge said.
New vision leads to change
The office also attributes the change to Neronha embracing a new vision that expanded the scope of its Civil Division beyond just government litigation toward public protection and civil enforcement under the leadership of its chief, Miriam Weizenbaum.
In the Criminal Division, Hodge cited a focus on public safety, with an emphasis on violent crime prevention and detection while “embracing reform efforts that steer the lowest level, non-violent offenders out of the criminal justice system.”
Hodge pointed to the creation of a dedicated civil rights prosecution unit to handle hate crimes and police misconduct cases and a new cold-case unit as accomplishments. In addition, the office launched an investigation into the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, with a “fulsome” report coming in the new year.
“This work, this transformation, and the day-to-day carrying out of our continually expanding mission would not be possible without our talented attorneys and staff. While some have likely left the Office in recent years because the new direction in the Office wasn’t a fit, far more have been compelled to join because of the opportunities the Office now presents,” Hodge said.
At present, the office has a total of 103 attorneys, out of 264 total staff across all divisions, according to Hodge. There are 69 attorneys in the Criminal Division, which charges about 5,000 cases a year, and 30 in the Civil Division. There are currently more than 15,600 pending Superior Court criminal cases and more than 600 civil matters.
Hodge sent The Journal a list showing 57 special assistant and assistant attorneys general being hired since Neronha took office, as well as dozens of other new hires, including the cold-case investigators.
Hodge said the office currently has 11 openings for attorneys but expects to extend eight offers within the next 30 days. At that point, the office expects to have 261 positions filled, he said.
National shortages and inexperienced litigators
Experts observed that some shortages are being felt nationally across the criminal justice community – both in defense and prosecutors’ offices – due to salaries failing to keep pace with the private sector and backlogs wrought by the pandemic.
“The jobs have become increasingly more challenging,” said Rachel Marshall, executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Add to that the increased politicization of prosecutorial offices and the added scrutiny fueled by social media, Marshall said. The advent of digital evidence and body-camera footage tasks prosecutors with reviewing reams of data.
But, Marshall said, in the court arena, years on the job matter.
“Being a litigator is something you get better at with experience,” she said. A lack of experienced prosecutors leads to a vacuum in mentorship for new, often young lawyers joining the ranks, she said.
“Without that much expertise in the office, it leaves it without that historic knowledge,” she said.
According to Hodge, that is not an issue at the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, where 10 lawyers fit that description, including three new hires who brought 20-plus years of experience.
“We have both retained and recruited highly experienced staff committed to public service and to bringing up and supporting the next generation of public servants and leaders,” Hodge said.
Michael DiLauro, a retired assistant public defender, said that ultimately it’s up to a judge to make sure proceedings are fair when faced with an inexperienced prosecutor or defense lawyer.
Gone are the days when applicants were clamoring to fill public-service jobs like public defender and prosecutor positions, he said.
“When you lose that institutional knowledge, it’s hard. Every time they lose someone, it’s a problem,” DiLauro said, adding, “At the end of the day, it’s a management problem they have to deal with.”