Public defender drama a lesson - we hope

The Times-Standard

Now that the Humboldt County Public Defender’s
Office is a shell of its former self, we hope the
last year has been a teachable moment for the county’s shot-callers.

David Marcus lasted nine months as public
defender, and we could all spend the next nine
wondering aloud just who, exactly, thought it
would be advisable to hire a public defender who
hadn’t set foot inside a California courtroom since 2012.

(And now a reading from the Book of Rehash: State
law requires job candidates for the post to have
been a “practicing attorney in all the courts of
the state for at least the year preceding” their
hire. Marcus previously worked for a Contra Costa
County-based law firm between 2012 and 2017 on a
contract basis - while living in Florida.
Following Marcus’s February hiring, Eureka-based
attorney Patrik Griego filed a lawsuit
challenging the appointment; a visiting judge
allowed the suit to continue in September; Griego
dropped the suit following Marcus’s resignation on Thanksgiving eve.)

That’s the short version, and it’s only cost the
county nine months of an office in turmoil as attorney after attorney bolted.

The true cost to Humboldt County’s justice system
- which was already struggling with heavy
caseloads before all this public defender drama - is incalculable.

The impact of this mess - on defendants, on crime
victims, on taxpayers - is indefensible.

Some unsolicited advice to the Board of
Supervisors, which meets Tuesday to appoint Kaleb
Cockrum as interim public defender, on where to take things from here:

• Good on you for selecting Cockrum - now working
as the supervising attorney for Conflict Counsel,
a division of the Humboldt County Public
Defender’s Office - as your interim pick. You’ve
at least cleared the first hurdle there. We wish
him the best of luck stabilizing an office that’s
just been through nine months of turmoil.

• When you get around to appointing a permanent
public defender, do include someone on your
advisory committee who isn’t a district attorney
or a sheriff. No disrespect to either; we’re sure
everyone involved in the advisory committee
preceding Marcus’s hire was and is a true civil
servant passionately committed to the
dispassionate exercise of justice. Even so,
however well intentioned, however closely they’ll
work together in the future, having sitting
district attorneys involved in picking their
adversaries simply doesn’t past the smell test.

• Finally, the whole process needs more sunshine.
The Humboldt County justice system does not each
day spring forth fully formed from the forehead
of Zeus; mere mortals shape its policies and
findings every day with decisions that resonate
years into the future. People ought to be
publicly accountable for the decisions they make
with taxpayer money - not only because it’s the
right thing to do, but also because it might cost us all less of it.

Source link:
http://www.times-standard.com/opinion/20171202/public-defender-drama-a-lesson-we-hope