ACLU seeks reform of Grant County's public defense system

ELLENSBURG, Wash. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union and Columbia Legal Services have filed suit, seeking to reform a Grant County public defense system they called ”shamefully inadequate.”

The lawsuit filed Monday alleges that Grant County violated the federal and state constitutions by operating a public defense system that regularly and systematically deprived poor people of effective counsel. The lawsuit was filed in Kittitas County Superior Court on behalf of three people who say they received inadequate counsel.

”The right to be represented by an attorney is essential to a fair trial. This right means not just having a warm body, but having an effective attorney,” said Julya Hampton, legal program director for the ACLU of Washington. ”Grant County has sorely neglected this fundamental right.”

The administrator of Grant County's public defender's office, Doug Earl, did not return a telephone message seeking comment Monday.

Steve Hallstrom, chief deputy in the Grant County prosecutor's office, said Monday his office had just received the lawsuit and had not had time to review it.

The lawsuit alleges that Grant County public defenders failed to communicate with clients or interview witnesses and overlooked important evidence that might have proven clients' innocence. The lawsuit also says public defenders had caseloads in excess of standards established by the Washington State Bar Association.

The lawsuit comes after stories last weekend in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times about public defenders in the rural central Washington county.

Grant County public defender Tom Earl — Doug Earl's brother — saw his license suspended in February after more than a decade of complaints against him. He lost his $490,000-a-year contract with the county after the state bar accused him of mishandling dozens of cases and taking thousands of dollars from families for legal services he should have been providing for free. He may soon be barred from practicing law.

The Earls took on other lawyers to help with the public defender caseload.

Guillermo Romero, who has been another Grant County public defender, is facing possible disbarment over accusations that he mishandled clients' money and evaded taxes, though his license hasn't been suspended.

He is now working as a witness coordinator for the Grant County prosecutor's office.

Concerns over the clients' money involved a simple mistake that was quickly resolved, Romero has said, adding that he had been working on a payment plan with the Internal Revenue Service before the state bar investigation began.

A report by the ACLU last month cited convictions in Grant County that were overturned on appeal because the public defender took cases to trial without first investigating the state's primary witnesses, contacting defense witnesses, communicating with clients or visiting crime scenes.

”Unfortunately, these cases are not isolated instances or aberrations,” the report said. ”They reflect statewide problems in a system that is failing its mandate to provide indigent defense services that meet constitutional standards.”

The ACLU report also warned that excessive caseloads can render public defenders ineffective because they don't have enough time to do the work required for each case.

A spike in drug-related crimes has caused Grant County's felony caseload to climb from 300 cases a year to nearly 1,100 a year in the past decade.