State Public Defender's office: twenty-five years of legal defense.

• Date: 27 November 2002

Byline: Tony Anderson

For the past 25 years, the State Public Defender's office has been charged with providing legal representation to the indigent throughout the state. Despite early attempts to eliminate the agency, the SPD has persevered and grown.

Prior to 1977, the SPD operated as part of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, representing clients only after they had been convicted on issues of post-conviction relief, probation or parole revocation. At the trial level, circuit court judges were responsible for appointing counsel from the private bar.

That system led to inconsistencies from county to county in the ability to receive legal representation and the level of representation provided to defendants, recalled SPD Administrative Director Arlene Banoul.

"Prior to the (State) Public Defender, a person could be found indigent by a circuit judge in one county and under the same income not be found indigent in another county," Banoul said. "There were inconsistencies throughout the state."

Inconsistent Representation

Banoul, who has been with the SPD since 1978, was the fiscal analyst at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau who looked at the merits of the proposal to establish the SPD as an independent agency. Banoul reviewed the structure of the proposal, considered the benefits and looked at alternatives.

She noted the inconsistencies in representation from county to county prior to 1977. Concerns arose about the level of representation since there was no certification process for counsel. There was a perception that because a judge could appoint anyone, it was not a fair appointment process, she noted. Additional concerns arose because counsel was not appointed until the defendant arrived in court.

"There was no jail intake, which is what the public defender does now," Banoul recalled. "When you are arrested [now] you go through the eligibility process fairly soon after that. There were stories from Howard Eisenberg of people languishing in jail for months before even getting to court."

The late Eisenberg worked with John Torphy, who headed the State Budget Office, to develop the SPD proposal, which was part of the 1977-79 budget bill. Torphy, now the vice chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, began serving as the state budget director in 1974. Torphy actually urged then-Gov. Patrick J. Lucey to defeat an SPD proposal in the 1975-77 budget bill.

Torphy noted that he was a strong supporter of a statewide public defender system, but he...