P.D.'s under fire in 2005

Maybe in your jurisdiction, but definitely in Lake County, California -
Public defenders office under fire in 2005:

Normally when defense attorneys are successful, it's the people they represent who win acquittal. But in Lake County in the year just concluding it was the defense attorney, himself, who got a "second chance."

It happened this way. In a hail of controversy generated by a negative Grand Jury report over the county's public defender system, the Board of Supervisors terminated the contract of the Indigent Representation Administration (IRA) for which attorney Steven Carter was a co-principal.

Then, not much more than a month later, the board concluded a request for proposal (RFP) competitive bidding process that attracted six proposals by awarding a new contract to the newly created firm of Lake Legal Defense Services Inc. sole principal Steven Carter. In essence, it meant that the company that Carter had just created succeeded the one that he and co-owner Erik Bruce had just dismantled...