Opinion ID: 1788578
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Concerns of the Court and the Pending Motions

Text: The Second District Court of Appeal stated the following seven concerns: 1. Whether the productivity of the appellate division of the Public Defender's office is within an acceptable range. 2. Whether all of the attorneys assigned to that division are working exclusively on appellate matters. 3. Whether the Public Defender has taken adequate steps to assure that repetitive issues are handled efficiently. 4. Whether the Public Defender uses a team approach to maximize the efficiency of the briefing process. 5. Whether there are steps that the Public Defender, the Attorney General, and this court could collectively take to assure timely appellate review of indigent appeals. 6. Whether there are other steps which could be taken to allow for the timely prosecution of indigent appeals without transferring the cost for such appeals to the counties. 7. Ignoring earlier motions to withdraw filed with this court, whether the cases selected for the present motions have been chosen for any particular reason that should be made known to the court. The court's order did not restrict consideration to these concerns alone. The immediate question is of course the 382 pending motions. The transcript of the full hearing has been ordered and will be filed for record purposes. The undersigned commissioner recommends that the 382 motions be granted. Your commissioner finds that the productivity of the Public Defender's office is definitely within an acceptable range. Only one other appellate public defender's office exceeded the productivity of Mr. Moorman's office. All of the attorneys assigned to the appellate division are working exclusively on such matters except for fielding questions from trial attorneys on issues of law, handling weekend and holiday first appearances on a rotational basis with all other assistant Public Defenders, and occasionally, jail inspections. From your commissioner's former service as a circuit judge, I find that rotational service on weekend and holiday first appearances does not interfere with normal duties. The testimony received estimated that 99.5% of appellate attorneys' time was devoted to appeals. I accept that testimony. Your commissioner is not completely satisfied that adequate steps have been taken to assure that repetitive issues are being handled efficiently. Prior to July or August 1993, the Office of the Public Defender for the Tenth Judicial Circuit did not keep time records. Therefore, it is impossible to evaluate the relative productivity, i.e., speed and efficiency with which the various assistant appellate public defenders work. As a corollary, it could not be determined how much time each assistant devoted to an assigned case. Mr. Moorman is in the process of developing a time-keeping system. The Public Defender does not use a team approach in the actual briefing process. Testimony was received that this would actually delay the briefing process because each team member would need to become familiar with the record. The system used requires that each brief be reviewed by another assistant public defender prior to filing, not only to check grammar and spelling but to review legal citations and made [sic] suggestions for improvement in overall content. For the most part, sharing of ideas and prior legal research between appellate attorneys is done informally and efficiently. There are also regularly scheduled review sessions on current case law known as Florida Law Weekly Reviews. At present, greater use of a more formal team approach would not enhance the efficiency of the Public defender's brief writing. This finding is based on the consistent testimony of the numerous lawyers who testified, many of whom were not associated with the Tenth Circuit office. Most of the witnesses were simply unfamiliar with a multiple lawyer team approach to brief writing. When an illegal sentence is the only issue in an appeal, the Public Defender's and Attorney General's offices could stipulate to a resentencing, with this court's permission, without going through the whole briefing and decision process. In order to assure the trial court's cooperation it may require an order of this court finding the sentence illegal. No evidence was presented concerning other steps that could be taken in handling indigent appeals without transferring the cost to the counties. The cases which are the subject of all pending motions to withdraw were selected solely because the initial briefs are in excess of sixty days overdue. The Public Defender's March 1993 motions related to forty-four percent of the cases received in October. Thereafter, the Public Defender has moved to withdraw from all cases received when the initial briefs are in excess of sixty days overdue. Cases sought to be withdrawn from are based upon the number of records received from the respective counties which cannot be briefed timely. Pursuant to section 27.51(4), Florida Statutes (1991) the elected Public Defenders located in the second, seventh, nineteenth, eleventh, and fifteenth judicial circuits are assigned the additional duty of handling all indigent criminal appeals within their respective district court's jurisdiction. Thus the Tenth Circuit Public Defender, Mr. J. Marion Moorman, has the responsibility for handling all indigent criminal appeals in the Second District Court of Appeal upon designation by the respective trial Public Defenders. The Second District is unique in that it has the largest population, the largest civil and criminal caseloads, the highest jury trial rate (4.24%) in criminal cases, the highest number of appeals assigned to a Public Defender, and the highest criminal appeal backlog within the office of a Public Defender. These are problems of long-standing. See Skitka v. State, 579 So.2d 102 (Fla. 1991); In re: Order on Prosecution of Criminal Appeals by the Tenth Judicial Circuit Public Defender, 561 So.2d 1130 (Fla. 1990). Although this proceeding technically concerned only the motions to withdraw and petitions for mandamus in the Second District Court of Appeal, the Commissioner was furnished with evidence concerning the four other appellate Public Defender offices. Either the elected Public Defender or the head of the appellate division from each of these offices testified to the local situation in the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Districts. The Commissioner was thus given a statewide view of the overall workload problem. Generally, the workload/caseload demands on the Public Defenders in Florida are extremely high.