The Maryland Office of the Public Defender must fine-tune its procedures for determining who is eligible for its services and improve its bookkeeping and fee collection practices, according to a legislative audit published Tuesday. The audit, which covered mid-2007 through mid-2010, also faulted the indigent legal defense agency for contracting out network and database management instead of handling it in-house and for paying one employee for 168 days after the person left -- to the tune of $20,560.
Former State Public Defender Nancy S. Forster sued the state of Maryland Monday, nearly a year after her controversial firing by two members of the agency's three-member board of trustees. Forster, whose ouster from the 900-employee Office of the Public Defender led to legislative reform of the previously obscure board, alleges Chairman T. Wray McCurdy and member Margaret A. Mead "overstepped their authority" with "not negotiable" demands for structural and personnel changes.
Topping the agenda of legal issues facing the 2010 General Assembly will be legislation to reform the board that hires and fires Maryland's public defender, following the unexpected termination last summer of the state's chief attorney for indigent criminal defendants. The legislators also will consider a bill to crack down on criminal gangs. But the proposal, backed by the state's lead prosecutors, has already drawn criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which says the measure would do little to curtail violence and much to make criminals out of youngsters forced into gangs.
Maryland's top court has agreed to consider whether fired State Public Defender Nancy S. Forster can proceed with her $1 million wrongful-termination lawsuit against the state. The Court of Appeals said this month that it will hear Forster's argument that a Baltimore trial judge erred in dismissing Forster's claim that her Aug. 21, 2009, firing was due to her refusal to implement illegal orders from the three-member board of trustees that presided over the public defender's office.
The Maryland public defender will serve a six-year term and be overseen by a 13-member board under legislation the General Assembly passed Monday night. The new law, which takes effect June 1, follows the controversial firing last August of former Public Defender Nancy S. Forster on a 2- 1 vote by the agency's current three-member board of trustees.
After more than three decades of standing up for the underprivileged, Maryland's public defender will have his last day at the office next Friday. I've spun an 18-week project that I started in September 1970 into a 34-year career, Stephen E. Harris laughed. Maybe it is time to do something else.
A week into his new job as Maryland public defender, Paul B. DeWolfe Jr. has, as promised, not made any quick decisions about the controversial agency reorganization demands made of his fired predecessor, Nancy S. Forster. But even at this early stage, DeWolfe has decided that Van A. Lewis, the chief financial officer of the Office of the Public Defender since 2007, will not continue in his budget management capacity with the incoming administration. Lewis was let go on Friday.
Nothing focuses an appellate attorney's mind more than having an argument scheduled before the U.S. Supreme Court. And so it is for Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Assistant State Public Defender Celia Anderson Davis, who will clash before the nation's highest tribunal at 11 this morning, the first Monday in October.
When a hypothetical Indigent Joe Offender commits a crime in Maryland, he maybe serves a little time, is rehabilitated and goes on to become a model citizen. Right?Well, sometimes. In fact, only about half the time, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.Public Defender Nancy S. Forster suspects that's because the offender never receives the help he needs in other areas of his life to steer him on the right path.Her plan to break this cycle is a holistic approach to criminal defense - one that not only attacks the specific charge that brought the client into her agency, but also helps deal with the client's housing eviction, drug addiction, child custody dispute or public benefits bureaucracy. While the lawyers in her office can't handle all those needs, ...
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