Defender S Office

Chief Judge Robert M. Bell told the General Assembly yesterday that more judges are not the cure for the backlog of delayed cases in Baltimore's Circuit Court.Delivering his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Delegates, Bell warned legislators that the city's public defender and state's attorney's office will need more lawyers to handle an increased criminal caseload.Referring to newspaper accounts of repeated trial delays leading to dismissals of serious criminal cases, Bell said, "Those stories have not furthered our quest to inspire the public's confidence in the judiciary."

Alan Hamilton Murrell, a renowned defense attorney who was hand-picked in 1971 to create Maryland's public defender's office, died of pneumonia early yesterday at an Annapolis nursing home. He was 97.The longtime resident of Ten Hills in Southwest Baltimore served as the state's top public defender from the age of 69 to 88, when he retired."To the end, he was bright as a penny," said Joan Whelihan of Potomac, Mr. Murrell's only child. "He left [the defenders' office] in 1990 when my mother became ill. But he loved his work so much, he would have liked to have been carried out."

Six weeks after developing a stopgap plan to get lawyers for indigent defendants facing felony drug charges in Baltimore Circuit Court, officials once again have a dearth of defenders.Public defenders, who represent the poor in the city's criminal courts, have told judges that they will not represent defendants indefinitely in two new drug courts because they do not have enough staff."We're back where we started," Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said yesterday. "We can do very little when defendants are not adequately represented.

It's Wednesday morning, and Andre N. Cooper is in Baltimore Circuit Court facing 20 years in prison for felony drug charges. Prosecutors offer him a plea bargain that would keep him out of jail.He needs to think about it, he says. Where does the 30-year-old cook turn to mull his future?To his mother. There's no one else. He has no attorney and no hope of getting one soon.Cooper is one of 350 people charged with felony crimes in Baltimore that the Office of Public Defender -- which provides attorneys for the poor -- says it can't help.

Damon Davis nervously walked into Baltimore Circuit Court two weeks ago knowing he faced drug charges that could put him behind bars for 20 years.What he didn't know was that he would go to jail that day for a different reason: He had no attorney.Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas has been jailing defendants such as Damon, 17, for at least two months because they showed up for trials without lawyers -- at least 20 were incarcerated, said an attorney who plans to challenge the practice.

Fearful that some criminal charges may be dismissed, Baltimore court officials have designed a stop-gap plan to ensure that defendants facing felony drug charges have attorneys to represent them in court.Under the plan, formally announced yesterday, some of the 350 indigent defendants who have been denied attorneys because the Office of the Public Defender does not have the staff to represent them will be brought back into court between Nov. 2 and 24.A public defender will represent them and negotiate plea agreements or set trial dates, said Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph P. McCurdy.

Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas will no longer jail defendants who come to court without attorneys, halting a potential legal challenge by an attorney who called the practice "plainly unconstitutional."Prevas has decided to stop the practice, Judge Edward J. Angeletti said yesterday. Angeletti has been acting chief judge.Prevas, who spoke openly in an interview with The Sun last week about his reasons for jailing defendants and appeared eager for a legal challenge, said through a secretary he would not comment.

Prosecutor Martha Ann Sitterding has resigned as deputy state's attorney for Carroll County, effective Aug. 1, to join her husband's growing private law practice in Westminster, she said yesterday.The transition from prosecuting attorney to defense attorney should not be difficult, she said."As a prosecutor, you ask yourself, 'What do I have here, and what does it tell me?' As a defense attorney, you ask, "What's here, and what's the matter with it?' "Sitterding joined the state's attorney's office 18 months ago after 13 years specializing in sexual offense cases with the Public Defender's Office of Carroll County.

Rockville. -- Laura Houghteling was murdered last October about a mile from my house. Her body was found the other day about a half-mile from here. Laura's death has shaken this quiet suburban community on the border between Bethesda and Rockville. For weeks after the young Bethesda woman disappeared, I compulsively double-checked the locks on my doors and windows. Now that Laura's murderer has confessed in open court, I find myself even more troubled by how the Montgomery County police handled the case.

Assistant Public Defender W. Samuel Truette left the Carroll County office Monday to begin taking cases in Howard County.According to lawyers in the Carroll public defender's office, the decision to leave Carroll was Mr. Truette's.Mr. Truette, a one-time head of the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force, has been a public defender since 1990, when he left the Carroll State's Attorney's Office. In his tenure as a Carroll public defender, he represented many people who had been charged by the drug task force.

The state oversight board that governs Maryland's public defender's office may be able to avoid answering questions about its sudden firing of the agency's head, Nancy S. Forster, by hiding behind the state law protecting personnel decisions from public disclosure. But that does not absolve it of the duty to inform the public about its intentions for a vital agency that ensures the fairness and equity of our criminal justice system. The only hints we have about what led two of the three board members to fire Ms. Forster come from a memo written by Ms. Forster listing changes she says they wanted in the department, including the disbanding of the capital defense and juvenile protection departments of the office; closing a community defenders operation; outsourcing Child in Need of Assistance representation to private attorneys; and firing the Baltimore County public defender, Thelma Triplin.

Baltimore judges will take over the job of appointing private attorneys to represent poor defendants when the public defender's office can't, the city's chief district judge announced yesterday at a meeting of criminal justice officials. In more than 2,300 city cases last year, the public defender's office hired private counsel because it couldn't represent more than one defendant in a case. But budget cuts have forced State Public Defender Nancy Forster to stop hiring so-called "panel attorneys."

The state's chief judge is working on a way to ensure that poor defendants have lawyers now that budget cuts have forced the Maryland Office of the Public Defender to stop paying private attorneys to represent clients that the office can't. The public defender's office frequently calls on private counsel because it can't represent more than one defendant in a criminal case or a jailhouse informant testifying against one of its clients. Last year, more than 2,700 indigent defendants in Baltimore were represented by private attorneys under those circumstances, according to the public defender's office.

Over objections from the Baltimore state's attorney's office, a District Court judge ordered yesterday that public defenders may have access to the man charged with killing a city police officer Tuesday. The suspect, Brandon Grimes, 21, was wounded in the leg in a shootout with the officer and has been under police guard at St. Agnes Hospital. Police charged him Tuesday with first-degree murder, assault and two handgun violations but have not yet served the arrest warrant. His mother said that she has not been able to see him and that the hospital would not give her basic information about his condition.

Public defender drops suit after fixes in Central Booking processing The public defender's office dropped its lawsuit against the state-run prison system yesterday, saying it was satisfied with progress in ending overcrowding at the Central Booking and Intake Center that had routinely kept detainees jailed longer than legally allowed. Only four people in the past nine months have been kept at the processing center for more than 24 hours without seeing a lawyer or having a bail hearing, a marked improvement from 18 months ago when as many as 84 detainees a day were being held for too long without seeing a judge or court commissioner.

State juvenile services officials agreed yesterday to offer more educational programs at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, beginning next week. The step came after a Baltimore judge summoned them to a 2 1/2 -hour, closed-door meeting to address complaints that young offenders held in the state-run juvenile jail have not been getting their usual classroom instruction since Dec. 5. Deputy Juvenile Services Secretary Steve Moyer said youths have been getting adequate education services.

WHY DID THE public defender's office ask the court to free its clients imprisoned at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center? Here's why: An ill-designed child storage wing, a grievously persistent shortage of adults to oversee these temporary wards of the state, a grim inability of the Department of Juvenile Services and its bosses to treat their latest powder keg as a crisis. A public so numbed by persistent -- quarterly -- reports of violence and ill-treatment at its holding tanks for youths in trouble that even when the federal Department of Justice says Maryland's big detention centers don't meet even minimum constitutional standards, and violate the civil rights of those confined there, much of the state seems to shrug.

Maryland Public Defender Stephen E. Harris will retire from the post May 1, prompting a nationwide search for the state's third defense chief in more than 30 years, officials said yesterday. Harris, 66, a one-time boss of the state's first lady, Kendel Ehrlich, and who has run the public defender's office since September 1990, leaves the post on the heels of an American Bar Association report in the fall that criticized the state's system for defending juveniles. Although the report did not blame Harris' administration, it pointed to numerous problems with public defenders in juvenile cases, including a lack of preparation and failure to provide representation throughout the legal process.

Employees and clients of the public defender's office for Anne Arundel County may have to allow for more travel time between the courthouse and the office if it moves to a new location next year as proposed. The move, designed to cut costs, would relocate the Annapolis office from 60 West St. to 1700 Margaret Ave., a building west of downtown that also houses the Legion Avenue post office. The public defender's current lease is set to expire early next year. Because of continuing negotiations between the property manager and the state Department of General Services, information on specific savings was not available, said the department's spokesman, Dyer Bell.

Employees and clients of the public defender's office for Anne Arundel County may have to allow for more travel time between the courthouse and the office if it moves to a new location next year as proposed. The move, designed to cut costs, would relocate the Annapolis office from 60 West St. to 1700 Margaret Ave., a building west of downtown that also houses the Legion Avenue post office. The public defender's current lease is set to expire early next year. Because of continuing negotiations between the property manager and the state Department of General Services, information on specific savings was not available, said the department's spokesman, Dyer Bell.