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After 20 years, public defense chief changes direction

The Wenatchee World - 11/21/2017

Nov. 21--WENATCHEE -- Keith Howard likes to say that in 20 years as Chelan County's chief public defender, he's served about a year in jail.

Howard, executive director of the nonprofit Counsel for Defense of Chelan County, sets aside part of each week to visit clients housed in the Chelan County Regional Justice Center. By definition, public defense clients are criminal suspects who can't afford a lawyer -- hence, they can't afford bail.

Those visits, Howard calculates, average out at this point to 365 days.

"That's one of the freeing parts about being a public defender -- there's no money involved," he says. "I can sit and talk with a client for as long as I want, and he doesn't have to worry about it costing him anything."

Howard, 53, will leave the agency he helped found Dec. 31. He won't call it retirement: "Just changing directions in my life. I've enjoyed this job the whole time, but sometimes you say, well, what else can I do?" The organization's board voted in October to name Jeremy Ford, a longtime assistant public defender, as the agency's new head.

Raised in California, Howard attended law school at Gonzaga University and arrived in Wenatchee at age 25, after a few years as a Spokane public defender, to join the firm led by attorney Jeff Barker. At the time, Chelan County managed its criminal defense of indigent clients on a contract basis, and Barker's firm held the franchise.

In indigent defense, Howard says, "You get to do two things: You get to help people, plus, and this may sound melodramatic -- you get to defend the Constitution every day. Because if the Constitution doesn't apply to everyone, it doesn't apply to anyone."

While under the contract, Barker's firm represented defendants in the infamous Wenatchee sex abuse prosecutions, which led to charges of child sexual abuse against 42 Wenatchee Valley residents. The alleged victims later recanted most of their claims, investigations by police and social workers were criticized as overreaching and coercive, and appeals courts ruled that some clients were poorly assisted by their public defenders.

Howard represented Carol Doggett, who was convicted at trial of child rape and molestation in 1995 and sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison. The state Court of Appeals overturned her convictions in 1997, ruling there was insufficient proof the alleged child victim had been truthful in disclosures of abuse to a counselor.

"I truly believed that Carol Doggett was innocent," Howard says now. "I don't mean not guilty, I mean innocent. And that case bothered me for quite a long time. I really thought I gave every effort in that case, and to still have her convicted was just terrible."

Other factors also led the contract defense system to fall into disfavor. Grant County's public defense network was the subject of a 2004 class action suit, in which a judge found evidence of "systemic deficiencies" including overworked defense lawyers, ineffective supervision, and interference with funding by the Grant County Prosecutor's Office.

After Howard established his own law firm and won the defense contract in 2003, he approached Chelan County's judges and commissioners about "the idea of taking the profit out of public defense." He essentially retooled his firm into the nonprofit Counsel for Defense, ultimately hiring a team of up to 10 attorneys, two investigators and multiple support staff. In 2016, the agency aided 920 District Court clients, more than 500 in Superior Court and 200 new juvenile clients.

Lawyer Paul Kube, who chairs the Counsel for Defense board, said attorneys there are paid on par with lawyers in the Chelan County Prosecutor's Office. "Those attorneys, they're not the most highly paid lawyers, necessarily, but they're paid well, and they attract and retain quality candidates," he said. "That's what we wanted to be able to do on the defense side. Keith's been absolutely instrumental in accomplishing that."

"Other counties are trying to model themselves after Keith's program," said Superior Court Judge T.W, "Chip" Small, who helped draft Chelan County's public defense standards. "It's a really well-oiled machine he's built there."

Looking back on the sex-abuse prosecutions scandal, Howard says, "I feel that we've developed our system so that can't happen again. At least from the public defense side. In those days, we were so under-resourced in terms of investigations that it made things really difficult."

On the other hand, his biggest regret has been Chelan County's failure to establish a drug court, used to manage nonviolent criminal cases where the defendant has an acknowledged chemical dependency. "This is something that's been proven to reduce recidivism, protect the community, and save money," he argues.

Whether crime stems from addiction, poverty or mental illness, he says, "If we had a system that addresses the root cause, instead of just what has been done, we'd have a safer community, and much less tax burden on the people."

Reach Jefferson Robbins at 509-664-7123 or robbins@wenatcheeworld.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRobbinsWW. Contact him securely by PGP key.

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