Stay ConnectedAnyone paying attention can tell you that our criminal legal system is perpetuating cruelty and harm, but the complexity of the legal world overwhelms most people simply trying to get through another day.
Public Defenseless explores the rot in the justice system and what we can do about it. Join host, Hunter Parnell, as he interviews top defense attorneys and criminal justice stakeholders from across the country as they pull apart the convoluted web of our criminal justice system.
Continuing this weeks coverage of the family policing system, Hunter was joined by Annick Lenoir-Peek, a North Carolina Deputy Parent Defender. Just like Tuesday's episode with Josh, Annick walks us through the hypocrisy inherent to the family policing system, but Annick also demonstrates a practical way for attorneys at any level to push back. By zealously bringing cases through the appellate system, Annick hopes she can continue to secure major victories for her clients in North Carolina and around the country.
Guests:
Annick Lenoir-Peek, North Carolina Deputy Parent Defender
Resources:
Jones v Hendrix
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/jones-v-hendrix/
NCIDS.org
Contact Annick
annick.i.lenoir.peek@nccourts.org
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Today's episode kicks off these weeks focus on the family welfare system aka the family policing system. Hunter sat down with Josh Michtom, a senior assistant public defender in Juvenile representation. Despite the title, Josh primarily represents parents as the state attempts to take their children away. As with so much of our criminal legal system, the contours of the family policing system in Connecticut cannot be understood without first understanding the many racial, class, and gender based biased baked into it.
Guests:
Josh Michtom, Senior Assistant Public Defender in Juvenile representation, Connecticut
Resources:
Josh's Article: A Call to Action for Parents' Lawyers in the Family Regulation System: Bearing Witness as Praxis and Practice in the Face of Structural Injustice
https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/jlp/vol31/iss2/3/
McKeiver v Pennsylvania
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/322
Follow Josh on Twitter
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Today, Hunter spoke with Deepak Budwani, the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of the Santa Barbara Public Defender Office to discuss how he was able to grow the office 80% in just five years. Long time listeners of the show will know the emphasis on data collection and data analysis, and Deepak is the model for why those things are a must for public defense. In just under 90 days, Deepak helped open a new PD office in Idaho, and by taking the mindset from his time in the public sector, Deepak quickly grew that office by 50% in just three years. None of these massive success stories could have been possible if Deepak didn't understand the importance of creating and utilizing systems and processes that could capture the data he needed to make meaningful budget requests!
Guests:
Deepak Budwani, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Santa Barbara Public Defense
Resources:
Contact Deepak
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepak-budwani-57827042
DBudwani@countyofsb.org
Santa Barbara Public Defender
https://www.countyofsb.org/187/Public-Defender
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Today, Hunter spoke with Civil Rights Corps' Attorney Peter Santina to discuss their efforts in uncovering and challenging prosecutorial misconduct. From Alleghany County to San Francisco County, Peter and his team are those leading the charge in revealing the negligence, maleficence, and misconduct of prosecutors around the country. This episode, however, does offer a reminder that all of their actions are enabled by judges, politicians, and legal ethics bodies that sit by and do nothing to hold prosecutors accountable for their actions.
Guests:
Peter Santina, Managing Attorney of the Prosecutorial Accountability Project, Civil Rights Corps
Resources:
To do something about this, and raise awareness of this continuing racial discrimination, CRC worked with our AccountabilityNY professor partners to prepare and file 10 complaints against prosecutors alleging court findings of racial or religious discrimination. CRC also publicized the fact that an attorney for the NYPD union had once been a prosecutor who used a handwritten guide of racist and sexist tropes to select juries, leading to three reversals. Journalists at the Gothamist, The City, Queens Daily Eagle, and Davis Vanguard each wrote original stories about the discrimination complaints. CRC attorney Bina Ahmad appeared on WBAI radio and WNYC radio with Dexter Murray, a man personally victimized by this form of discrimination. Mr. Murray's powerful op-ed ran in the NY Daily News.
In San Francisco, nearly 1,000 people are past their last day for speedy trial, over 100 of whom are incarcerated, awaiting an unknown trial date. In a particular pending case, the San Francisco Public Defender's Office asked the California Supreme Court to intervene and restore people's speedy trial rights. In support of this petition, CRC filed an amicus brief to explain to the justices how the denial of speedy trial rights turns an already-flawed system of plea bargaining into a system of plea begging and unfairly extends the already-oppressive conditions of pretrial detention. CRC await the California Supreme Court's decision.
The prosecutor's choice to pursue or dismiss charges is one of their greatest powers and is ripe for abuse. As over 90 percent of criminal cases resolve by plea bargain, recent reports have exposed the troubling lack of transparency and oversight in this plea bargain system (2020 Vera Institute Report) and that innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit (2023 American Bar Association Task Force Report).
In March 2023, the longtime Allegheny County District Attorney, Stephen Zappala, was in a contentious primary battle for reelection against the Chief Public Defender, who was also running for District Attorney. It was reported that after Zappala did not secure the Democratic Committee's nomination, a supervisor in his office gave line prosecutors instructions that referenced the election. In the following days, two prosecutors were reported to refused to dismiss weak charges, and each prosecutor cited the election—and Zappala's endorsement loss—in their explanation. CRC worked with two legendary professors, David Rudovsky (Penn Carey School of Law) and Jules Lobel (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), to prepare and file an ethics complaint with the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania against Zappala. We included a 2021 incident where Zappala ordered his prosecutors to not offer any plea bargain to clients of a Black defense attorney who had criticized his office. A journalist at the PGH City Paper wrote about the complaint, interviewing Peter.
Civil Rights Corps
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On previous episodes, we have talked about the importance of data collection and collaboration with outside organizations to turn that data into meaningful talking points for policy change. On today's show, Hunter was joined by three amazing data scientists from SMU's Deason Center, Dr. Andrew Davies, Dr. Victoria Smiegocki, and Shelby Sirivore, to discuss some of their interesting data analysis on Public Defense in Texas. From appointment rates to the impacts of having a institutional public defense, today's guests offer us a glimpse into the insights every state could glean if it only collected the data necessary for people like Andy, Victoria, and Shelby the chance to analyze it.
Guests:
Dr. Andrew Davies, Research Director, SMU Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center
Dr. Victoria Smiegocki, Assistant Research Director, SMU Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center
Shelby Sirivore, Research Project Coordinator
Resources:
SMU Deason Center
https://www.smu.edu/Law/Centers-and-Initiatives/Deason-Center
Texas Eligibility Standards
https://scholar.smu.edu/deasoncenter/8/
Rural Representation in Texas
https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr/vol71/iss2/5/
Qualities of Public Defender Leader
https://smu.box.com/s/x0gjpz6py3wwcvlcdcxc8omnma55n7bd
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Publicdefenseless@gmail.com
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On today's show, Hunter sat down with Cameron Blazer, the Circuit Public Defender in Charleston, South Carolina, to discuss the past, present, and future of Public Defense in the state. From the start of the show, Hunter has long wanted to discuss with more detail the South Carolina practice of non-attorneys serving as judges, but there is so much more to this episode than that. In an unusual turn of events, South Carolina has actually started to increase the funding for Public Defense, and in turn, people like Cameron are seizing the opportunity to make meaningful changes to both their practice and the lives of their clients.
Guests:
Cameron Blazer, Circuit Public Defender, 9th Circuit, South Carolina
Resources:
"When Your Judge Isn't a Lawyer"
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/when-your-judge-isnt-a-lawyer/515568
"Lawsuit Challenges Rural Judges without Law Degrees Instructed to Oversee Jury Trials."
"Rush To Judgement: How South Carolina's Summary Courts Fail to Protect Constitutional Rights".
"Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina's Summary Courts"
"These Judges Can Have Less Training Than Barbers but Still Decide Thousands of Cases Each Year."
After More Than Five Years of Litigation, Lexington County, S.C., Agrees to Dramatically Increase Funding for Indigent Defense
South Carolina Public Defender Commission
Follow Cameron on Twitter
https://twitter.com/cameronblazer?lang=en
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It's no secret that the Public Defenseless Podcast firmly stands in the "abolish cash bail" camp. On today's episode, Hunter is joined by criminal defense attorney, Katie Yens, to demonstrate yet another reason why the practice must cease to exist. Despite, perhaps, good intentions of judges and prosecutors, the bond laws in Colorado allow for the bail bond industry to enrich themselves off the backs of those that can least afford it. Today's conversation is all about this obscure, but deeply influential practice of bond forfeiture and revocation.
Guests:
Katie Yens, Criminal Defense Attorney, LFM Defense
Resources:
Email Katie
Katie@lfmdefense.com
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A little over a year ago, Hunter spoke with Rocky Ramirez about how a simple bit of no-code programming was able to cut down appointment times from nearly a week to less than half a day. Today, Hunter invited Rocky back on the show to discuss the steps he's taken over the past year in Bexar County to find tech solutions for the many issues with Public Defense. While the Managed Assigned Counsel system he operates in is unique, the theme of this episode applies equally to all practitioners of public defense: it is imperative that Public Defenders analyse what policies, procedures, and practices could be made more efficient with simple tech solutions!
Guests:
Rocky Ramirez, Law and Technology Resource Attorney, Bexar County, Texas
Resources:
Email Rocky:
rocky.ramirez@bexar.org
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Today, Hunter spoke with Randy Fiedler and Stacy Newman about the best ways to handle a challenging client. Whether it is due to mental illness, mistrust, or some other external factor, every public defender has at one point in time dealt with a client they would consider challenging. The question is then, what are the skills and best practices to foster the trusting relationship that is necessary to combat the challenges any client may present.
Guests:
Randy Fiedler, Public Defender, Nevada
Stacy Newman, Public Defender, Nevada
Resources:
McCoy v Louisiana
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-8255_i4ek.pdf
Autonomy Isn't Everything
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2770&context=facpub
ABA standards on Mental Health
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Today, Hunter spoke with Patrick Crowley, Michael Naughton and Jonathan Sacks to talk through the attorney shortage crisis in rural America and what we can do to reverse the trend. While today's episode focuses a lot on what is happening in rural Michigan, make no mistake, this is a problem facing nearly every state in the country. As rural, small town America has declined over the past decades, it has become harder and harder to entice young public defenders, laden with outrageous student debt, to want to practice in the rural parts of a state. So what can be done? With this conversation, Hunter hopes to spark new conversations and solutions to a problem that is seemingly only getting worse as the years go by.
Guests:
Patrick Crowley, Chief Public Defender, Marquette County, Michigan
Michael Naughton, Attorney and Partner, North Coast Legal, PLC.
Jonathan Sacks, Director, Michigan State Appellate Defender Office
Resources:
Michael's Report on the Issue
https://michiganidc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/M.-Naughton-Report-Attorney-Shortages.pdf
SADO.org
MIDC
Marquette County Public Defender
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