Serving the Public: SPD Promotes Democratic Ideals, Internationally

Promoting democratic ideals through the Gideon Initiative, the Wisconsin State Public Defender's Office provides a model for Israel.

By Dianne Molvig

Hanging on a wall in Nick Chiarkas's office is an enlargement of a photograph he took more than 30 years ago when he was a cop on Manhattan's Lower East Side - long before he became Wisconsin's State Public Defender. The photo shows a street sign for a legal services agency, announcing its free services in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Hebrew. These days that old photo has new significance for Chiarkas, as he and his staff build connections with public defenders from other cultures, through a project called the Gideon Initiative.

In fact, Chiarkas's Israeli counterpart, Chief Public Defender Kenneth Mann, took a copy of that photograph back to Israel with him after a visit to Madison last March. In October, Mann returned to Wisconsin along with nine other attorneys from Israel's Office of the Public Defender for 10 days of idea sharing and training.

Both visits were under the auspices of the Gideon Initiative, named after the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, which established a poor person's right to counsel in criminal prosecution. The Gideon Initiative's mission is "to promote democratic ideals through the advancement of quality public defender programs in the criminal justice systems of existing and emerging democracies throughout the world."

It's a one-step-at-a-time kind of project. A major first step, two years in the making, has been establishing an ongoing teaching/mentoring relationship between the Wisconsin and Israeli public defender offices. The United States and Israel are among the few countries worldwide who have public defender programs, according to Chiarkas. Other democracies that provide counsel for indigent criminal defendants often do so by appointed counsel - a system Israel abandoned because of severe quality problems and high costs. In 1995 the Knesset, Israel's national legislature, passed a law creating a public defender agency.

Growing a Partnership

The roots of the Gideon Initiative date back to July 1997, when American University in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. State Department hosted a meeting of a few invited American public defenders with Mann and three of his staff. The seeds of Israel's public defender program began in a law school seminar taught by Mann at Tel Aviv University; he's on leave from teaching to head up the new agency. Mann requested the Washington meeting to solicit ideas he and his staff could adapt to Israel's fledgling program.

One of the Americans invited to that meeting was Chiarkas. Of all the public defender programs discussed, Mann was most taken by Wisconsin's. Before parting ways, Mann and Chiarkas agreed to stay in regular contact, and a year later, Mann asked Chiarkas to come to Israel to help spread the word about the public defender concept. With funding from the U.S. State Department, Chiarkas embarked on a 10-day tour of Israel, a country about one-sixth the size of Wisconsin, with roughly the same population. Chiarkas brainstormed with Mann's staff and also spoke to judges, prosecutors, and other government justice officials about the importance of public defender programs.

"The questions they had primarily were about how this would improve their quality of justice," Chiarkas says. "I told them that I like to play pool, and if I play with somebody who's good, my game improves. If I play with somebody who's bad, my game drops. Prosecutors say that happens to them, too, depending on who the defense is. I explained that as public defenders get better at what they do, so do the prosecutors and judges. And you provide a better justice system to all citizens."

After Chiarkas's visit to Israel, a reciprocal visit seemed in order to give the Israeli public defenders a first-hand look at Wisconsin's system. The question was how to pay for it. The Gideon Initiative launched a fund-raising effort, with the help of Milwaukee philanthropist Martin Stein, Madison fund-raiser Mark Laufman, and Milwaukee attorneys Nathan Fishbach and Leonard Loeb. The fund got a boost through major donations from Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, Foley & Lardner, Milwaukee attorney Frank Gimbel, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, plus smaller contributions from a host of supporters. With money in hand, plans for the Israelis' visit got under way.

Intensive Training

Upon arrival in Madison in October, the Israeli attorneys launched into a packed 10-day schedule. They spent 12 hours or more each day in classes, visits to Oxford Prison and the Fox Lake Correctional Institute, tours of several Wisconsin public defender offices, a visit to intake court in Milwaukee, a luncheon with state supreme court justices, an evening reception with the governor, and more.

Most of the people in the group had read about public defender systems in the United States, but had never seen them in operation, points out Moshe Hacohen, chief district public defender in the Jerusalem office. Hacohen is one of the few among the visitors who has had prior direct experience with the U.S. system. He studied public defender programs in the states under a scholarship and worked for a time in the Washington, D.C., public defender office.

"One of the concepts I knew about, but that is novel to the others in our group," Hacohen says, "is the use of investigators and social workers in public defender cases. People theoretically know about that, but when you see it in action, it's different. It gives us encouragement to lobby and press for that" back in Israel.

Other key differences between the Israeli and Wisconsin approaches exist. For instance, the Israeli office works much more closely with its 600 assigned private bar counsel, who handle 95 percent of the total public defender caseload. "In our system, the assigned counsel are actually agents of our office," Mann explains. His agency hopes to expand its staff (currently 50 attorneys in five district offices) in coming years and thus be able to bring the staff/private bar caseload mix to roughly 50/50.

Despite differences between the systems, Mann feels he and his staff learn a great deal from their Wisconsin partnership. "I think our biggest challenge in Israel is learning how to create a cost-effective way of supervising a large number of attorneys and a large number of cases, [while also] giving quality services," he says. "For that purpose, we came to Wisconsin, which has a high quality public defender office and a highly developed managerial sector."

Give and Take

Mann also cites specific ideas he feels his agency can implement in Israel. One example is fee collection from clients, based on what they can afford to pay. Israel has only begun to set up such a program. "We have learned a lot about that here," Mann says. "We've learned that we can get some income from the client population. It's not going to cover a large part of our budget, but even a small part would allow our office to do some things we might not otherwise be able to do. Also, when the client pays something, there's more respect for the service."

Besides specific program ideas, visitors say they're leaving with general impressions, which can be equally helpful back on the job. Dori Pinto, deputy national public defender, says he's impressed by the systematic way the Wisconsin office trains lawyers. "Another thing," he adds, "is that there are so many experienced lawyers here who have been [public defenders] for 10, 15, or 20 years. And they want to stay. That's something for us to think about."

First assistant to the national public defender David Weiner agrees. "There's a kind of professionalism here that we don't have yet because we're new to this business," he notes. "It's exciting to see people who have been in this profession for a while, and have gone through all the things we're probably still going to go through. The people who do this work have a tremendous sense of mission, and they enjoy it. [We have met] people who still feel that way after all these years. We're going to try to keep that 30 years from now ... to figure out the secret of keeping that flame burning."

If the Israeli visitors took home a dose of inspiration, they also left some behind. "This is exciting," Chiarkas says of his staff members' involvement with their Israeli counterparts, "because we're all united in the idea that poor people should be treated fairly in court, whether it's here in Wisconsin or in Beersheba."

Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service, a Madison research, writing, and editing service. She is a frequent contributor to area publications.

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