Public Defenders

Unsolicited praise from a convicted cop-killer isn't the kind of endorsement a judge with a tough law enforcement stance wants. But that's what Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick got from former client Ted Oswald, a man convicted of killing a police captain in 1994. The judge is now seeking a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

For nearly 26 years, the affidavit was sealed in an envelope and stored in a locked box, tucked away with the lawyer's passport and will. Sometimes he stashed the box in his bedroom closet, other times under his bed. It stayed there -- year after year, decade after decade. Then, about two years ago, Dale Coventry, the box's owner, got a call from his former colleague, W. Jamie Kunz. Both were once public defenders. They hadn't talked in a decade. "We're both getting on in years," Kunz said.

When Georgia instituted a statewide public defender system in 2005, human rights groups praised it as a milestone in ensuring that poor criminal defendants received their constitutional right to a fair trial. Until then, counties determined how indigent people would be represented. In some counties, the courts operated like assembly lines, with defendants pleading guilty after talking with their appointed lawyers for a few minutes.

Calling the Orleans Parish program for defending indigent clients "a mockery" of what a criminal justice system should provide, a criminal court judge ordered 42 defendants released and their prosecutions halted Friday. Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr., an outspoken critic of the public defender's office, charged that the financially strapped and overburdened program had failed to adequately represent poor defendants.

An irate judge halted the prosecution of 42 criminal defendants, saying the underfunded public defender's office in New Orleans is not providing adequate representation. State Judge Arthur Hunter also ordered 16 of the defendants released from jail even though they have not made bail. Hunter set a May 7 hearing for dozens of other defendants who he said are poor but cannot get adequate representation.

The exchange between judge and defendant happens many times every court day. "You got a lawyer? Can you afford one?" Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. will say in his customarily affable way, which often puts the person standing in front of him at ease. "OK, I'm going to appoint you a public defender." But the number of times Hunter has said those words and then seen the defendant receive subpar representation spurred him to take on the city's indigent-defense program.

The man sitting in the big comfy chair in the big comfy office in Santa Monica looks familiar and sounds familiar but -- in some hard-to-define way -- he is not familiar at all. He turns 64 this December yet remains youthful in a way that only California and good genes can confer. His hair is gray. His skin is unwrinkled. But what is so different about Steven Bochco may be this: He is reflective and even philosophical.

The controversy over this city's beleaguered public defender system escalated on three fronts Thursday. A Tulane University Law School professor filed a suit asserting that the state's method of funding indigent defense was unconstitutional. Louisiana is the only state to finance its public defender system primarily through traffic tickets and other court fines -- a financing method criticized as unreliable and inadequate at the best of times, and only exacerbated since Hurricane Katrina.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday appointed a former deputy associate public defender in Orange County to head the county's public defender's office. Doreen Boxer will oversee nearly 200 employees and a $23.5-million budget. She fills a post that John Roth quit last year after board members criticized his hiring of an attorney with a criminal background. The attorney, Geoffrey Newman, had been convicted of paying inmates to find clients for him in the county jails.

For poor criminal defendants, "justice is simply unavailable" in New Orleans now, concludes a Justice Department report that calls for a major overhaul of the city's public defender system. The report, obtained by The Times, says the city needs 70 full-time public defenders, more than six times the number of part-time defenders it has now, and a $10-million infusion of cash to have an adequate system.