OH: ensuring effective assistance trumps hurrying the docket

Good news from John Wesley Hall, Jr.'s Law of Criminal Defense:

OH11: Brian Jones contempt case reversed

Where the public defender was appointed the day before trial and requested a continuance to prepare, it was an abuse of discretion to deny a continuance and hold defense counsel in contempt for not proceeding to trial where he would have been ineffective per se...

Previous items about the wrath of Plough here.

Update from the Record-Courier: Plough ruling overturned by appeals court. Second time Portage judge overruled in two weeks

And you wouldn't want to live there

More photographic proof of our public defender pariah status - we're even scaring off drop-in visitors!

Bonus link goes to Simple Justice and Scott Greenfield's (improvement on my) post on a similar theme, This Year's Loser Job.

But I was nowhere near Cleveland!

Now and then, P.D. sightings turn up in unexpected blog places. From the Cleveland Sandwich Board:

...a man in a short-sleeve shirt and tie who looked haggard. I imagined his life as a tired, spent public defender who made his living defending petty criminals and getting beaten up by the prosecutors. He still found the heart to joke with our host, and I liked him for it...

The Vanilla Ice of public defenders?

Okay, I'm fairly sure that this new blogger is writing fiction:

The Public Pretender

(besides stealing the blog name from someone who claimed it before he did)

(let me rescind that: the old blog is named "Public Pretender," where the new blog is named "The Public Pretender." See, it's like one is "Under Pressure," and the other is "Ice Ice Baby."

Wingnut vs. public defenders

Matthew of Right Angle Blog argues:

Right to Counsel, But No Right to Have it PAID For

While Joseph at Plunderbund is more of a vouchers guy:

Legal Choice: Market Forces Improve Defense Counsel

OH: Judge Plough -" We all must accept some blame for what happened here"

More from the Record Courier:

Plough fines public defender $100 on contempt charge

Assistant Portage County Public Defender Brian Jones was ordered to pay $100 and court costs Friday at his sentencing hearing on a charge of contempt of court leveled last week by Portage County Municipal Court Judge John Plough. Plough immediately delayed the sentence pending an appeal.

Jones, who was surrounded by family, friends and fellow attorneys at Friday's sentencing, was cited for contempt after he told Plough in court Aug. 16 that he was unprepared to move forward on a misdemeanor assault case scheduled two months prior but only given to the Portage County Public Defender's Office the day before.

Jones also was ordered to pay $48.50 in restitution to two witnesses who had to skip work that day to attend the trial.

Cleveland attorney Ian Friedman, brought on to defend Jones in the sentencing hearing, had earlier argued Jones did not intend to obstruct the justice of Plough's court, nor had he ever misbehaved prior to this incident. "The charge is in direct contention with the (law's) requirement of willful disobedience" that can lead to a charge of contempt, Friedman argued. "Brian Jones had no business trying to move forward on that trial."

Plough said he might have been convinced to continue the trial after the prosecution presented its case to allow Jones more time to prepare a defense.

"The court does make exceptions in the interest of justice," Plough said, later adding "this court has to be concerned with everybody's discipline in the criminal justice system ... We all must accept some blame for what happened here."

Plough told Jones he was not upset with the young lawyer who passed the bar earlier this year and has only been a public defender for four months. Plough said he had seen Jones in action in two jury trials that resulted in not guilty verdicts for Jones' clients. "You have a very bright future. You showed more poise than many attorneys I've known who've been practicing law for many years," Plough said...

More from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Contempt upheld for Ohio public defender

OH: $100 & costs for p.d. "contempt"

From Recordpub.com:

Plough fines public defender $100 and costs on contempt charge

Portage County Municipal Court Judge John Plough fined Assistant Portage County Public Defender Brian Jones $100 plus court costs at a sentencing hearing Friday on a charge of contempt of court stemming from Jones not going forward with a court case Aug. 16. Plough also suspended three days in jail and ordered Jones to pay $48.50 in restitution...

OH: "Judge Plough is absolutely wrong"

From Recordpub.com:

Lager planning lawyer's defense - Portage defender confident of win

Portage County's top public defender will be in court Friday to defend one of his employees on a contempt of court charge leveled by Portage County Municipal Court Judge John Plough.

Controversy continues to brew over Plough charging Assistant Public Defender Brian Jones with contempt for refusing to go forward with representing a defendant in a misdemeanor assault case on less than 24 hours notice.

Portage County Public Defender Dennis Lager said his office is "very comfortable in the manner in which we are conducting ourselves and that we are appropriate and correct in our legal and ethical obligations" to clients, and will continue to provide legal counsel to defendants per their Sixth Amendment rights.

"Judge Plough is absolutely wrong. There was no contempt of court by Mr. Jones," Lager said Tuesday, adding his office "relishes the opportunity" to prove it in court...

"Whereas we are officers of the court, we are not pawns of the court," Lager said. "You can't just have counsel sit there like a potted plant and presume to follow the Sixth Amendment."

OH: justice held hostage update from Portage County

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Portage County Judge Plough criticized for arrest of public defender

A controversial Portage County judge has drawn the ire of national and state lawyers associations because he ordered the arrest of a county public defender. Judge John Plough ordered sheriff's deputies Wednesday to take Assistant Public Defender Brian Jones into custody because he was not prepared to go to trial. He was held five hours be fore he was released on bond...

See also National lawyers group condemns Portage County judge for arresting public defender

OH: "the public defender's office is not going to impede justice in Portage County"

From the Record-Courier:

Plough has public defender arrested - Attorney told judge he was not ready to try case he had for less than a day

Portage County Municipal Court Judge John Plough ordered a Portage County public defender placed under arrest for contempt of court Thursday. The order was given after the attorney said he was unprepared and unable to begin a scheduled trial, having only been appointed to represent a defendant the day before the trial was scheduled to begin.

Brian Jones, an employee of Portage County Public Defender Dennis Lager since May, was held in contempt of court during an afternoon trial at Portage County Municipal Court in Kent after he told Plough he was unable to go forward with the trial. Plough ordered a Portage County Sheriff's deputy to remove Jones from his courtroom in front of his client, spectators and courthouse employees...

Via John Wesley Hall Jr.s' Law of Criminal Defense.

WA: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will

This one's for my Ohio colleague, whom I once called "Dennis Kucinich":










Presidential primary year 2004, at the caucus I attended, before ultimately switching to John Edwards (where I still am) I signed up for Dennis Kucinich, only to find it was just me and the locally famous teepee - dwelling ex-hippie activist standing up for the little guy. This time and this place, there were about 100 times as many ex- and current hippies in attendance, in an overflow crowd along with Greeners, labor guys, and a few drivers of expensive Swedish cars. The congressman spoke well for his causes, and I enjoyed the sensation of feeling like a moderate in a left - of - center land.

OH: cost-cutting, cutting defense

From the Salem News:

Defender quits, raps fund cuts

The Columbiana County Commissioners fell short on funding for all the wheels of justice, not just the spoke representing public defense attorneys.

Lawrence Stacey II, one of three attorneys who recently tendered their resignations from the Criminal Defense Company, said the reduction in funds would cost him about $8,000 in pay this year, questioning whether the commissioners would be willing to take an $8,000 pay cut...

The public defender's office used to be a department with appropriations through the general fund, but was shut down several years ago. As an alternative to attorneys submitting their own hourly rate bills for public defense work, which proved costly, a company of attorneys was formed as a cheaper alternative...

How's that Criminal Defense Company working out for all of you?

OH: ex-p.d. compelled to testify

Attorney agrees to testify in Erica Baker case

A former public defender has agreed to testify about what a former client may have told her about the 1999 disappearance of 9-year-old Erica Baker.

In announcing what ends a 3 1/2-year legal dispute, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. said Beth Lewis' lawyers contacted him before noon Tuesday and said she was prepared to testify before a grand jury...

(Lewis) lost another legal fight on Tuesday in her effort to avoid testifying about what a former client may have told her regarding the missing 9-year-old girl.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 3-0 that federal courts do not have jurisdiction in the matter and sent the case back to state court, which found Beth Lewis in contempt for refusing to testify in the disappearance...

Ohio is one of the few states that allow a surviving spouse to give permission for an attorney to reveal privileged conversations between lawyers and clients.

Three-fifths of a voter

A quick quiz on democracy and incarceration: what do Pickaway Correctional Institution, Ross Correctional Institution and Chillicothe Correctional Institution have in common, besides being prisons in Ohio?

The answer is that they're all in Ohio House of Representatives district 85. And because the U.S. census counts prisoners in the place where they are incarcerated rather than the place where they lived prior to arrest, it also means that every inmate in those facilities -- about 9 percent of the total population of the district, according to the website Prisoners of the Census – is counted as a resident of the area.

Unlike the other residents, though, the prisoners of district 85 never get to vote...

A decision is also pending from the 2nd Circuit in Muntaqim v. Coombe... [O]ne amicus brief from the National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative discusses the effect of incarceration on apportionment patterns – a phenomenon the brief describes as being "a striking modern-day parallel to the 'Three-Fifths Clause' of the United States Constitution." The court heard oral argument on that case en banc in June.

via John Elias at ACS Blog.

To the contract PD's of Cincinnati, my apologies

I guess the pay isn't that good after all:

" (Head P.D. Lou) Strigari has about 30 employees in his office -- the same number he's had for a decade -- and a $10 million annual budget. Those employees, though, mostly handle misdemeanor cases. The felony cases are handled by private attorneys who are appointed to the cases by judges and can charge no more than $40 per hour for their work."

What is the deal with managing a public defense system this way?

Cincy civil rights lawyer to PD's: go to jury trial once in a while!

Alert Reader somewhere deep in Ohio sends this link from Cincinnati, where a lawsuit filed Wednesday claims that "(p)oor defendants in Hamilton County suffer unnecessarily harsh punishments because the Public Defender's Office fails to seek jury trials in many criminal cases."

Maybe more to the point would be some lawsuits for judges who dole out unnecessarily harsh punishment because defendants seek jury trials .

Anyway, it's a fair point that you don't want a PD or a whole office of PD's not going to trial because they're not prepared, or don't have the time to prepare. This can be an instance where old-fashioned Western-style winging it is called for. Caseload pressure is one thing; earning a reputation as a dumptruck is another.

The suit is being brought on behalf of all misdemeanor clients of the PD's office by attorney Robert Newman. The article states that this is one of several filed by the same lawyer against the same PD's office.

Hamilton County, Ohio, does seem to have somewhat of a novel system, where misdemeanor cases are handled by the office's staff lawyers, while the more serious felony cases are handed off to private counsel, who are then paid by the county. We kind of like to keep the serious cases in-house out here. However, the Cincinnati model is better if your goal as a public official is to spread the wealth around. There's also a helpful page where, if your lawyer's too busy, you can download your own pleadings.

Not to let the PD's hog the limelight, and perhaps inspired by the example of the PD's office in Billings, Montana, yesterday the county prosecutor in Cincinnati had his own intra-office awkwardness to explain.