{"id":4826,"date":"2004-05-10T23:49:22","date_gmt":"2004-05-11T03:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/05\/10\/shameless-public-defender-dis"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:47","slug":"shameless-public-defender-disbarred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/05\/10\/shameless-public-defender-disbarred\/","title":{"rendered":"Shameless Public Defender Disbarred"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"jailbird  We try not to be too preachy these days, but the conduct of Grant County, WA, public defender Thomas J. Earl<\/STRONG> is simply shameful.  He was disbarred last week by the Washington State Supreme Court for, among other things, soliciting thousands of dollars each from indigent defendants for work already paid for by the County.  (See law.com NewsWire, Private Billing Public Defender<\/FONT><\/A>, 05-11-04)<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT><\/SPAN> <\/DIV>
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As the Seattle Times<\/EM> reported<\/A> on Saturday:<\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV>
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“Earl defended thousands of accused felons in 18 years of public-defense work and previously handled or farmed out all court-appointed work in Grant County Superior Court under a $500,000-a-year contract.  . . . <\/FONT>
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“By carrying a crushing caseload that eclipsed limits recommended by bar groups, Earl maximized his income while leaving little time for each client. Over the years, his income for public-defense work climbed from $40,000 to $80,000 to six figures. In 2002, he retained about $255,000 after paying other public defenders, The Seattle Times found. “<\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Earl handled over 400 felony cases in 2003.  The state bar guidelines advise a limit of 150 felonies per year.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV>
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    If it took a Seattle Times<\/EM> expose’ to get disciplinary action started, the Washington Bar should be ashamed, too.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      We try not to be too preachy these days, but the conduct of Grant County, WA, public defender Thomas J. Earl is simply shameful.  He was disbarred last week by the Washington State Supreme Court for, among other things, soliciting thousands of dollars each from indigent defendants for work already paid for by the County.  (See […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1fQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13833,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826\/revisions\/13833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}