A League of Our Own:

The Short History and Rapid Progress of the

Arizona Public Defender Association

For years, public defenders in Arizona talked about establishing a statewide organization devoted to their work and the improvement of indigent representation. On May 20, 2002, this goal was attained, when the Arizona Public Defender Association was incorporated.

The effort to create APDA began in earnest in September 2001, when Emery La Barge, Navajo County Public Defender, invited the directors of Arizona’s county public defender offices to a meeting at the fall seminar of the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice in Scottsdale. Eleven of the state’s public defense directors attended, and all expressed interest in forming a statewide organization. At the next meeting, in December 2001, sixteen county public defenders and one city public defender attended, and the effort gained momentum. After several more meetings and some pro bono advice from our friends in civil practice, the APDA filed its Articles of Incorporation with the Arizona Corporation Commission in May 2002.

APDA’s initial Board of Directors included the heads of seventeen county public defender offices and the City of Phoenix Public Defender. One of the Board’s first decisions was that APDA should not be an organization exclusively for attorneys, but should recognize public defense support staff as full partners. The Board voted to add a director to represent support staff interests, and elected Diane Terribile, Administrator of the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office, to this position.

The short-term goal of APDA was to improve communication and collaboration between the public defense offices and programs around the state, including county, city, federal and tribal programs. One of the first things that APDA did was to set up a listserve so that the directors of these offices and programs could quickly exchange ideas and information. Annual reports and caseload statistics were exchanged so that each office could see what the others were doing.

It didn’t take long for APDA to get its first taste of what can be accomplished through improved cooperation and communication. Armed with statistics from other counties, Mohave County PD Dana Hlavac was able to show his county manager that adding staff to his office would be the most cost-effective means to handle the county’s growing caseloads. The result was an increase of approximately 33% in funding and 50% in staffing, including the addition of nine attorneys and three investigators.

APDA’s existence was quickly recognized by the Arizona Legislature. In House Bill 2289, passed just before APDA was incorporated, the legislature created the Joint Study Committee on State Funding of the Court System. The bill specified that the committee would include a public defender to be named by APDA. APDA named Dana Hlavac as the public defender member to serve on this important committee.

The long term goals of APDA are to promote the core values of indigent representation: providing high quality representation to our clients, and thereby enhancing and protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system; safeguarding our clients’ constitutional rights, and thereby preserving the rights of all; striving for dispositions that are effective in addressing our clients’ underlying problems, giving them the best chance of success; and making indigent representation a satisfying and rewarding career choice for attorneys, paraprofessionals, and support staff.

To foster these values, the APDA directors discussed various ideas, including: creating a motion, brief, and jury instruction bank accessible throughout the state; providing training and networking opportunities; working with national and local defense organizations to stay on the cutting edge of indigent representation; establishing a presence at the Arizona legislature and working to obtain representation on the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission; seeking grant funding; assisting in the local and national movements to provide student loan repayment assistance for public defender attorneys; improving the quality and uniformity of data collection for budgeting and staffing purposes; and establishing caseload and performance standards.

A substantial amount of progress has been made on most of these goals in APDA’s short existence. Mohave County Public Defender Dana Hlavac has represented the APDA at the state legislature, bolstering the efforts of the legislative liaisons for the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office and the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice. Substantial progress has been made in establishing public defense representation on the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission – the bill that went nowhere in 2004 was passed by the Arizona House of Representatives in 2005 before stalling in the Senate. This effort is gaining momentum, and important relationships have been formed that will hopefully enable APDA to achieve this goal in 2006.

For the last three years, APDA has lobbied in Washington D.C. in support of legislation that would provide student loan relief for public defenders. Dana Hlavac and Jim Haas have joined with the American Council of Chief Defenders in their annual visit to Capital Hill in this important effort. In the process, APDA has formed productive relationships with national organizations and public defense offices throughout the United States.

The APDA Standards Subcommittee, chaired by former Pima County Public Defender Susan Kettlewell and Cochise County Public Defender Mark Suagee, has developed attorney performance standards distilled from the best practices of defense offices and organizations across the country.

But by far the most significant impact has been made in the area of training. To advance the goal of providing training and networking opportunities, the APDA Board decided to conduct an annual statewide conference that would provide top-notch training for attorneys of all experience levels and support staff of all functional categories. The Board decided that this conference should showcase the immense talent of Arizona’s public defense practitioners while also including recognized national speakers.

The Board decided to hold the conference in a central location, and chose the Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe. To avoid as many scheduling conflicts as possible for the conference attendees, the Board decided to conduct the conference at the same time as the state judicial conference, when most state courts are closed down. This presented a monumental challenge when the budget uncertainty that followed 9/11 nearly forced the cancellation of the 2002 judicial conference. In late April, the dates of the conference had still not been set. Finally, the judicial conference was scheduled for late June, barely 60 days away.

Led by Phoenix Public Defender Gary Kula, members of the APDA Seminar Subcommittee and their staff members worked feverishly to organize the first annual APDA conference. Not knowing what to expect, Gary put together an ambitious schedule of classes and presenters and hoped that the state’s public defense attorneys and staff would respond.

The outcome was beyond all expectations. Gary and the Subcommittee hoped that 200 would attend, and were shocked when over 500 registered! Clearly there was a large pent-up demand across the state for a conference that focused on public defense issues.

The first APDA statewide conference was phenomenal. The energy generated by over 500 public defense attorneys and support staff members in one place at one time was simply amazing. The Mission Palms courtyard was filled with people getting reacquainted with old friends and making new ones. The energy peaked during a luncheon when awards were given by the APDA Board to recognize attorneys and staff members who provided outstanding service to our clients during the previous year.

Buoyed by the success of the first conference, the APDA set out to reach new heights at the second annual conference in June 2004. By this time, the word had spread that APDA was doing something special in Tempe, and the registration soared over 800! Concerned that the Mission Palms could not handle such a crowd, Gary and the Subcommittee capped registration at 800 and had to turn away another 100 would-be attendees.

At the second conference, over 130 speakers conducted over 90 training sessions, covering topics ranging from dealing with difficult people to accident reconstruction to preparing mitigation in capital cases. At the awards luncheon, Gerry Spence gave a rousing speech recognizing the attorneys and staff of Arizona’s public defense offices and programs for the important and challenging work that they do.

As this is being written (May 2005), plans for the Third Annual APDA Statewide Conference are being finalized. Each year, the APDA has reserved a larger portion of the rooms at the Mission Palms for the conference. This year, 230 rooms were blocked off. These rooms were sold out in April, over a month before the announcement for the conference was distributed, and additional rooms had to be reserved at another nearby hotel.

APDA has already reserved the Mission Palms for the Fourth Annual Conference in June 2006 – this time the entire hotel.

APDA has made an amazing amount of progress in its short existence. It has brought the Arizona public defense community together in ways that were beyond its founders’ wildest dreams.