There was no direct evidence showing that Vernice Harris was the person who gave her 2-year-old daughter a fatal dose of methadone. But with the promise of drug and mental health treatment instead of hard time, Harris pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter. She quickly failed out of the program, and now is serving 10 years in prison.
Harris' lawyer, public defender Maureen Rowland, remains haunted by the result. Her client's right to a fair trial was overshadowed, she believes, by her agency's bent toward social work.
"Really, what good did I do her?" asked Rowland. "It showed me how misguided it is to get too involved in trying to help someone."
The case illustrates an identity crisis facing the Maryland Office of the Public Defender - a struggle highlighted by the sudden firing two weeks ago of director Nancy S. Forster. Should the agency's 500 attorneys and hundreds of support staff focus solely on legal duties, or strive for loftier goals, such as reducing crime and rehabilitating criminals?
Forster was considered one of the country's most socially progressive public defenders, but her oversight board wanted a more streamlined approach, a view given new urgency by the shrinking state budget.
Many of Rowland's colleagues believe in the holistic, community-based approach Forster favored. Working from a storefront office on Park Heights Avenue, Natalie Finegar said she helps criminal defendants with "whatever they need."
Finegar leads the 11-person Neighborhood Defenders Division, which Forster started in April 2007 in one of the most crime-afflicted areas of the state. The lawyers represent anyone arrested in Northwest Baltimore who qualifies for a public defender. And along with a social worker, they hand out condoms, give advice on education and job training, seek beds for drug addicts and help expunge criminal records.
"To try the case or negotiate a good deal and ignore everything else is like doing half the job," said Edie Cimino, one of the division's attorneys. She compared it to an emergency room doctor who releases a patient without aftercare instructions.
Public defenders are often forced to contend with social issues because a prosecutor proposes a guilty plea that includes drug treatment instead of jail or a judge suspends a prison sentence if a defendant seeks employment, lawyers say.
