Call for TaShun Bowden-Lewis supporters to attend April 16th public defender commission meeting.

Supporters of Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis are being urged to gather at the Legislative Office building on April 16th to “support one of our own.” In a video, one Bowden-Lewis supporter (or perhaps Bowden-Lewis herself, the speaker does not identify herself) claims she has been “retaliated against” and “publicly humiliated.” The Public Defenders Services Commission will at that meeting continue the process of determining if it will discipline Bowden-Lewis in the face of myriad accusations.

“Stand with us in solidarity as we protect one of our own,” the speaker requests. That refers to Bowden-Lewis’s race, the first Black lawyer to be appointed to lead the state’s public defenders. It is presumably not a call to stand in solidarity with an agency head accused of hacking into colleagues’ email accounts.

This is not the first race-based accusation to anchor the controversies that have swirled around Bowden-Lewis. A year ago, Bowden-Lewis through her lawyer accused the Public Defender Services Commission that hired her of creating a pretext for discrimination by disagreeing with some of her hiring and promotion recommendations. All but one commission member resigned.

Bowden-Lewis may eventually conclude that was a strategic error. The new commissioners who replaced the ones Bowden-Lewis chased away appear resolute in their determination to confront the intolerable atmosphere of suspicion, recriminations and fear of retribution that pervade the agency. Public defenders voted 121-9 in favor of a no-confidence motion in Bowden-Lewis.

Published March 28, 2024.