Wyandotte County has no public defender’s office, and that’s a scandal in itself

The lack of a public defender’s office in Wyandotte County is a scandal in itself. And in such a poor and diverse county, it’s a scandal that creates other scandals, and denies justice to too many defendants who can’t afford to hire their own counsel.

At a Saturday hearing on whether or not to create such an office, the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services heard howls of protest -- literally, in a couple of cases -- from some of the court-appointed attorneys who do that work now.

One of them, Charles Lamb, argued that he treats his paying and non-paying clients no differently. Definitely, he demonstrated that he has no trouble making himself heard in a courtroom.

“We’re all public defenders!” Lamb angrily told the board, which may decide as soon at its next meeting on Friday, Jan. 28. “The thought of replacing us!” None of those on “the list” of court-appointed attorneys has gotten rich doing that work, he said, and that’s true: The average amount paid to a court-appointed attorney to defend someone who can’t afford to hire his own lawyer in Wyandotte County is a pitiful $800.

Would the state expect a prosecutor’s office to spend only $800 on a case? No. A properly funded public defender’s office, set up to investigate the facts, will cost more, as it absolutely should.

As Wyandotte District Attorney Mark Dupree spoke in favor of creating a public defender’s office, Lamb screamed and cursed at him and stormed out of the hearing, at Kansas City, Kansas Community College.

“I’m used to the devil getting mad at me,” Dupree said in response.

The court-appointed attorneys who came to argue that they are, as Lamb said, some of the finest attorneys anywhere, are not the devil, and some no doubt do an admirable job. But there still is an urgent need for public defenders.

Several of the defense attorneys said that an injustice like the one done to Lamonte McIntyre, who served 23 years for a double murder he did not commit, would not have been prevented by a strong public defender’s office because it was caused by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

It was, yes. But it’s also true that Gary W. Long, the attorney that Judge J. Dexter Burdette appointed to represent 17-year-old McIntyre, was at the time on probation in state court and had been suspended in federal court. He had never tried a double murder case. The finest? He was later disbarred for incompetence, but has since gotten his license back, and was at the hearing on Saturday. In fact, he’s the current president of the local bar association in Wyandotte County.

McIntyre’s second court-appointed attorney, who took over for Long after his trial, never met with him, called no witnesses and was also later disbarred.

Jerome Gorman, who was 1st assistant district attorney and then the D.A. when some of the most problematic cases we know about were tried, left his job with the Brownback administration in 2018, after the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that he faced “complaints of tormenting state workers with sexually charged comments and unprofessional assertions that women in law enforcement are lesbians, Hispanic culture is bankrupting Catholic churches and pleasure can be found in scheduling job interviews for unqualified applicants with big breasts.”

Yet both Gorman and Long are on the current list of court-appointed attorneys in Wyandotte County, and what does that say?

Would such lawyers ever be hired to represent some white collar defendant? No, but for a Black 17-year-old with no resources whose case was being heard by a judge who also never mentioned that he’d previously been romantically involved with the prosecutor trying the case, anyone with a law degree is plenty good enough.

Glaring injustices occur in part because there is no healthy built-in check on the Kansas City Kansas Police Department or the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office. That’s what the public defender’s office would be set up to provide.

And though we wish he were even a little bit transparent, and far more aggressive in righting past wrongs, Dupree is right that, as he said at the hearing, “we have individuals, Black, brown, white, broke, all in the system who are sitting in jail and they do not have adequate representation…We literally have attorneys who are not requesting bond reductions.”

He has said that a person arrested for a crime is in custody for an average of 16 days before an attorney is appointed. That’s not the fault of the attorneys who at long last are appointed, but it is one important difference that having a public defender’s office would make.

Under the Sixth Amendment, defendants are entitled to representation at every stage of legal proceedings, and that’s a protection that’s routinely denied indigent defendants in Wyandotte County under the current system.

Marcus Winn, an organizer for the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, or MORE2, spoke at the hearing about the “compromising relationships” between judges and the appointed attorneys who often make donations to their reelection campaigns. “This appears normal in Wyandotte,” he said, but is anything but.

Several defense attorneys who spoke echoed Anthony Russo’s argument that “it’s not about money. I’m offended when people talk about it’s a money grab. I haven’t turned a voucher in since before 2020.”

Whether it’s “about the money,” is not the point, though. In fact, no matter how pure their motivations, it’s not about the attorneys at all, but about their indigent clients. A public defender’s office would augment rather than replace the services of court-appointed attorneys, and would give defendants without resources a better shot at justice.

This story was originally published January 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.