County commission sets indigent-defense rate, defies judges' order

Found $80,000 will cover conscripted attorneys' fees

Grant County commissioners voted unanimously to pay $550 per case to attorneys who were conscripted to represent indigent defenders in the wake of the disbarment of public defender Tom Earl.

The money to pay conscripted attorneys will come from late property-tax penalties and interest fees, Grant County Commissioner Leroy Allison said Tuesday morning.

Allison said the commissioners learned of the extra $80,000 after he met with Grant County Auditor Bill Varney and Treasurer Darryl Pheasant on May 27.

With 129 cases assigned to conscripted attorneys, commissioners will devote $71,500 to attorneys' fees and the remaining $8,500 for the attorneys' miscellaneous expenses in representing indigent defendants.

The commissioners' vote contradicts the decision from Grant County Superior Court judges, who ordered the commission to pay these attorneys 82.5 percent of their hourly fee. For some lawyers, that meant bills adding up to thousands of dollars for cases that are not yet complete.

The $550 flat rate is the same fee approved for the six attorneys the county has contracted with to provide indigent defense.

In an interview, Allison said he does not know how the county will pay attorneys whose fees under the judges' plan do not add up to $550 per case.

The commissioners have stated the judicial branch has no authority to order the county's executive branch to spend money. The commission lobbied for a fee of $50 per hour for conscripted attorneys.

"We literally have no other type of revenue we can look at," County Commissioner Tim Snead said. "We really don't have any other funding source out there."

But the judges claim a constitutional mandate to provide adequate indigent defense, and they say the system they developed was a stop-gap measure developed in an emergency.

When Earl's license was suspended in February, the county was left with no public defender and indigent defendants being charged in superior court. To temporarily solve the problem until commissioners signed contracts with new public defenders, judges assigned indigent cases first to volunteer attorneys from Grant and surrounding counties, then drafted attorneys to fill the caseload.

Evan Sperline, the presiding judge of the Grant County Superior Court and primary developer of the conscripted attorney system, could not be reached for comment for this story before deadline.

Superior Court Judge John Antosz approved two dockets directing commissioners to pay the conscripted attorneys at the rate set by the three superior court judges.

The total bill for those two dockets equaled about $61,095. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lyliane Sheetz said other attorneys have appeared in court to present their bills on an individual basis.

Of the 39 cases in which Antosz ruled on a payment on May 26, 34 remain open, which means indigent-defense attorneys will continue logging hours on those cases.

Early estimates from the commissioners' and prosecutor's offices indicate that about one-third of the 129 cases assigned to conscripted attorneys are complete.

This means that no one knows what the final bill would be under the judges' compensation system, though the most recent estimate from commissioners puts the county about $1 million in the hole overall because of criminal-defense costs.

Snead said that the county does not know what the final bill will be in a couple of high-profile homicide cases, such as the trial of Evan Savoie and Jake Eakin and the manslaughter case of Maribel Gomez.

He added that the county expects the state to "step up and help," as it did in a Pacific County case where an indigent defendant was charged with a homicide.

Commissioner Deborah Moore thanked the attorneys who donated their time to help take the conscripted cases.

As Moore spoke, Luke McKean, the only attorney in the commissioners' hearing room, stood up and left.

McKean, who was assigned about 15 indigent-defense cases, said he did not want to hear it.

"I wasn't going to sit there and listen to them thank us for being their scapegoats," he said.