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Alpena County to establish public defender office

News File Photo Defense attorney Bill Pfeifer is seen in his Alpena office in this April 2021 News archive photo.

ALPENA — Within months, defendants who can’t afford an attorney in Alpena will have access to full-time lawyers dedicated to defending the poor, according to Alpena defense attorney Bill Pfeifer.

An idea bandied about for at least a year by local attorneys, a public defender office will be up and running in Alpena by or near June 1, Pfeifer. The office — set up much like a prosecutor’s office, only working on behalf of defendants who can’t afford to hire legal help — will serve and be supported by Alpena and Montmorency counties, which share a court system.

Funded in large part by a state commission, the office will replace the current rotation of local attorneys who have agreed to handle the cases of impoverished people while still maintaining their own practices.

Pfeifer — who serves as a liaison between the counties and the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission — said a chief defender will be chosen soon.

The commission has encouraged the creation of public defender offices as it upped funding to counties to help them meet standards meant to improve indigent defense statewide.

Only a handful of Michigan counties had public defender offices in 2018, when Alpena County started a push to improve the work of court-appointed attorneys. Now there are 17, Pfeifer said.

The original April 1 target date for establishing the new Alpena/Montmorency County public defender office was bumped back several months, but, with county board approval secured and tax exempt corporation status obtained, the office that’s been in the planning stages for some time is close to being a reality.

A position opening, posted on state websites, netted five applicants for the job of chief defender. The applicant pool is a mix of local attorneys and out-of-towners, Pfeifer said.

To qualify for the position, an attorney must have at least 10 years of criminal defense experience and have worked at least five capital jury trials, or trials that could lead to a sentence of death or life in prison.

With few capital cases that go to trial in Northeast Michigan, that qualification narrows the pool of possible chief defenders significantly, Pfeifer said.

The new chief defender will pull a salary of $92,000, plus benefits, and will be responsible for staffing, training, supervising, and disciplining other office employees, including three other attorneys and two administrative staff, to be appointed after the chief defender is chosen.

Interviews of the five candidates begin this week.

The Michigan Indigent Defense Commission will pay almost 75% of the annual cost of operating the public defender office. The remainder of the cost, to be paid by Alpena and Montmorency counties, will be approximately as much as the counties pay now for the work of attorneys assigned to the cases of poor defendants.

Public offender offices offer a stable, full-time wage to attorneys so they don’t have to split their time between their indigent clients and their paying clients.

Pfeifer hopes the office’s staff includes new attorneys from out of the area — and that a full-time salary they can depend on will offer an incentive for them to stick around.

Northeast Michigan defendants can’t get the best defense possible when inexperienced attorneys come to the area to learn the ropes but then leave because they can’t earn enough to support their family or pay off their debt from law school.

That scenario plays out far too often in Alpena, Pfeifer said.

Though many court-appointed attorneys are as skilled as lawyers paid by their clients, they’re often overworked and underpaid, scrambling to keep up with the caseload handed them by the courts, Pfeifer said.

Some feel people feel those accused of crime don’t deserve a fair fight. That perspective changes, Pfeifer said, when the defendant is a spouse, or a sibling, or a son or daughter.

“There really has been a system of justice where those who could pay for it seemed to get better justice than those who couldn’t,” Pfeifer said. “The hope is that we’re going to eliminate that and it’s going to be equal for all.”

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