Attorney seeks sanctions against prosecutor

Prosecutor sought removal of conscripted, indigent-defense attorneys to protect public coffers

A Moses Lake attorney has filed sanctions against Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell for attempting to remove him from an indigent-defense case.

Harry Ries, who is representing convicted rapist Ruben Garza in determining restitution, has requested a sanction of $1,435 be imposed against Knodell, which would include the time Ries spent researching the matter (seven hours).

Ries appeared before Grant County Superior Court Judge John Antosz Tuesday morning. Antosz recused himself from the case, and the matter will be heard before Judge Evan Sperline on June 2.

The attempted removal of Ries from the Garza case was one of 103 filed by the prosecutor's office last week against conscripted, indigent-defense attorneys. Sperline dismissed every one of those motions without a hearing.

Ries, along with other private attorneys in Grant County, was conscripted by superior court judges in March to represent indigent defendants in the wake of the suspension and potential disbarment of public defender Tom Earl, who held the contract to represent those defendants.

County commissioners signed contracts with five attorneys in February to handle indigent-defense cases. But the three judges, fearing they would overburden those defenders by assigning all indigent defendants to those five attorneys, created a conscription system where private attorneys are assigned these cases until the contracted attorneys maintain a caseload on par with 150 per year.

Commissioners placed a cap of 150 cases per year for the contracted attorneys to avoid an overload. A sixth attorney was hired this month, Commissioner Leroy Allison said, and the county is looking at hiring as many as three more.

The Washington State Bar cited Earl's handling of too many cases as a primary reason why his license was suspended.

Superior court judges Sperline, Antosz and Kenneth Jorgensen decided the conscripted attorneys would receive 82.5 percent of their commercial hourly fee or $132 per hour, whichever was greater.

The money is the central issue of the dispute.

County commissioners had pushed for a $50-per-hour fee for conscripted attorneys. Their lawyer, Jerry Moberg, argued before Antosz earlier this month that attorneys have a moral obligation to volunteer their time. To charge anywhere near their commercial rate would cost the county too much money, Moberg argued.

In a brief to the court, Knodell wrote that other Washington counties pay public defenders between $30 and $40 per hour, while New York state pays its public defenders $75 per hour. Grant County is suffering through a lean financial year, and commissioners are worried where the money to pay conscripted attorneys will come from. Commissioners Deborah Moore and Leroy Allison were busy tallying the bills Tuesday afternoon, and no total is yet available for how much the conscripted attorneys' service will cost the county.

However, Allison did say Grant County began 2004 with $254,000 for unbudgeted expenses for criminal justice, and he is unsure whether those funds will cover the bills coming in from the conscripted attorneys.

Knodell said he, too, is worried about the public coffers. In an interview with the Herald, he said he sought to remove Ries and other conscripted attorneys from cases for that very reason.

"I did that in order to try to rescue the county treasury," he said. "I did it to save public dollars."

Ries, however, sees things differently.

"My personal opinion is that it was filed not for the purpose of assisting with the administration of the criminal justice system nor for any reason associated with any issue in Mr. Garza's case, but, rather, was filed simply for political purposes," Ries wrote in a brief to the court.

In his brief, Ries also argued that the board of county commissioners (which Knodell represents) is not a separate legal entity nor does it have the authority to intervene in a criminal proceeding.

Ries declined to comment directly on the matter, saying the court documents spoke for themselves.

In a response brief, Knodell wrote that his action to remove Ries from the case was on behalf of the state of Washington, not the commissioners.

"The State's unmistakable concern is that the budget not be depleted (unnecessarily in the face of a newly contracted defense panel) so as to threaten the administration of criminal justice both in the interest of the accused and the public," Knodell wrote.