In Florida each judicial district has a "Public Defender," which is the title given to the person who is the head of the Public Defender's office in each district. What's fairly bizarre about this is the "Public Defenders" in Florida are elected, not appointed. One of the obvious problems with having an elected official be responsible for protecting the legal rights of the poor is that a public defender's job is not to satisfy the public, its to zealously represent people accused of crimes regardless of how hideous are the crimes they're accused of.
Well, in the judicial district that includes Jacksonville this strange arrangement has resulted in someone winning an election for Public Defender who campaigned on a platform that consisted of being less confrontational with the police and even promising to no longer have PD attorneys question the credibiliity of the police. This campaign platform was so successful that the local police union actually endorsed the candidate making the promise.
Once the election was over the new "police/prosecution friendly" Public Defender promptly announced that he was going to fire the 10 most experienced attorneys in the office. Those being fired include two very experienced PD's who lead an effort to overturn the wrongful conviction of a 15 year old beaten and scared into confessing to a murder he didn't commit (this became the subject of an HBO film called "Murder on a Sunday Morning," for more info go to: http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/murder_sunday/).
So, the bottom line is that the role of the Public Defender in Jacksonville has been turned upside down, with the office now being controlled by someone who is close friends the with State's Attorney who prosecutes cases and is partially beholding to the police union for getting into office. There's a lot more to the story and for anyone interested I highly recommend this article:
http://www.folioweekly.com/documents/editorialtemplate_001.pdf.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
