ACLU approves public defenders

EPHRATA — Grant County received approval for their public defense department from a monitor overseeing the county efforts to improve their legal services after the 2005 settlement agreement with the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU).

Tito Rodriguez, the attorney monitoring the public defenders, sent the county a nine-page letter in April, detailing concerns about the department.

The county switched from contracting attorneys to a combination of in-house attorneys and contracted attorneys at the beginning of the year and opened new offices in March.

While Rodriguez stated in his original letter he approved hiring Rafael Gonzales as the supervising defense attorney, he didn’t approve making the public defenders a county department.

Rodriguez stated he was concerned about how much the public defenders were paid. At the time of his original letter, felony prosecutors were making $8,000 more than the highest paid public defender.

In response, the county raised the salaries of two of their public defenders, John Perry and John Doherty. Perry went from $81,372 a year to $91,764 a year. Doherty’s salary was raised to $81,372.

“We brought them up a level,” county Commissioner Cindy Carter said. “Even though, they agreed when they were hired what they would be paid, there was a pay increase for John Perry and John Doherty based on their experience.”

Rodriguez also questioned the way cases were assigned and suggested putting a quarterly case credit limit in place.

“While the settlement agreement requires an annual limit of 150 case equivalents per year, it is impossible to effectively handle that many cases in a month or two. The annual limit assumes that the cases are spread relatively evenly throughout the year,” he stated.

In response, the county adopted a 40-case-credit quarterly limit and a 16-case-credit monthly limit for their public defenders, according to the commissioner’s office. Attorneys can be assigned 44 case credits during the final quarter of the year. A case credit is basically one felony case, but some cases with many charges could be more credits.

Gonzales said the county had been operating this way for a while, and just formally adopted the requirement.

Another issue Rodriguez raised in his letter was creating a policy for conflicts of interest. The in-house attorneys are governed by the same rule as law firms, so if one attorney has a conflict of interest all of the in-house attorneys have the same conflict, Rodriguez stated.

In response, the county instituted new policies governing conflicts of interest by their in-house attorneys. Carter said the department is creating a database and moving the database into the department’s offices.

The database will compliment the Damion case management software, which the county purchased for the public defenders department.

This also deals with Rodriguez’s final concern that he didn’t see Gonzales taking over the office.

“We had (Alan White, the previous supervising attorney) bring all of his stuff in-house,” Carter said.

While Rodriguez stated he still has concerns about the transition being smooth and the conflict of interest policies, he didn’t feel they were large enough to delay approval.

“Moreover, I have every reason to believe that any remaining transitional issues will be resolved in the near future. I very much appreciated the work of the counsel and the board of county commissioners,” he stated.

Carter said Gonzales and June Strickler, the administrative services coordinator, worked hard to create these changes and get approval from Rodriguez.

“We recognize the overall transition may not be entirely smooth or perfect, but I think all of us who are concerned about this issue have every reason to believe that things will work out,” Carter stated.