New members of the Public Defender Services Commission will have three weeks to learn details of the fear and loathing that has recently marked the state agency they oversee. The Commission has moved its first meeting with five new members–and one still to be appointed–three weeks from Tuesday to April 24th.

The delay will provide new members with time to review the issues that caused a mass resignation of members two weeks ago. Members may want to conduct a candid canvas of the resigners and send a small delegation to meet with Attorney General William Tong to compare versions of events. The next three weeks will also provide Shipman & Goodwin sufficient time to conduct its investigation of a detailed complaint from an employee to the Commission about her treatment by Chief TaShun Bowden-Lewis. The Commission will also want to consider a request to Tong for a broader investigation. Many employees of the division would like to share their experiences and observations.

The Commission, now with three members, may want to review the state’s Freedom of Information Act. It is an arc that bends toward opening meetings, not closing them for the most tangential connections to exemptions.

Published April 3, 2023.

Some late changes Friday in appointments to the beleaguered Public Defender Services Commission. Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson rescinded his appointment of retired Associate Justice Richard Palmer, who will be appointed chair by Governor Ned Lamont. This makes Lamont the second Greenwich aristocrat to appoint Palmer to an important state government position.

Palmer is familiar with upheaval in law-related organizations. He and four Supreme Court colleagues quit the state judges’ association when a bipartisan majority of the state Senate rejected then-Governor Daniel P. Malloy’s 2018 nomination of Justice Andrew McDonald to serve as chief justice. Stories of McDonald’s bullying when he was a member of the Senate figured prominently in McDonald’s defeat despite a generously financed campaign in support of McDonald. McDonald’s vote on the high court for striking down the state’s death penalty law, passed when he was Malloy’s legal counsel, also rankled senators who had felt the lash of McDonald’s disdain.

Palmer squeaked to his final eight-year term on the court in 2017. The Senate voted 19-17 to confirm the former prosecutor who dealt a blow to the rule of law in 2015. Palmer created a legal doctrine to strike down the same death penalty law that dogged McDonald the next year. Palmer relied on his contention that the law “no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency….” to overturn the law. The gossamer but lethal Palmer doctrine makes it possible for any majority to overturn any law. Then-Chief Justice Chase Rodgers rebuked Palmer when she wrote that the legislature has a better sense of standards of decency than the high court. No one should be surprised if public defenders raise the standards of decency rule in sharing their recent experiences.

Judge Sheila Prats, appointed by Chief Justice Robinson Wednesday, remains.

Chief Justice Robinson appointed retired Superior Court Elliot Solomon to the spot Palmer occupied for a few days this week. Judge Solomon’s appointment comes as a jolt to veteran public defenders. They recall him as often hostile to their clients.

More appointments are expected early next week. Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter, who has left his vacant for months, is expected to to appoint former state Representative Russell Morin. Morin served five terms in the House. He did not seek a sixth term in 2020. Morin remains active in Democratic politics and works for the Connecticut Employees Union Independent.

Senate President Martin Looney appears likely to appoint polymath New Haven lawyer, Senate Clerk, presenter and author Michael Jefferson to the commission.

State law limits the number of members not appointed by the chief justice to no more than three from any political party.

The appointments will allow the commission to meet at their regularly scheduled meeting next week. Approving minutes from January’s executive session may prove a trial. Those minutes, in an unusual move, were tabled at the February meeting. The inability to agree on approving the meeting minutes

Posted March 31, 2023.

Introducing Stone Academy students to National Guard recruiters at an emergency career fair was not enough. More than 800 students who were locked out of the for-profit school regulated by the Office of Higher Education (OHE) want a fair deal and some help. OHE Executive Director has provided neither.

Nursing and health aide students with vivid signs took to the street Tuesday to protest Larson’s dithering. The former East Hartford mayor, airport administrator and state senator is looting the fund limited to reimbursing students who lose tuition when a school regulated by OHE closes. The 27-employee agency is paying an accounting firm $200,000 to audit student records, an unprecedented action that has historically been performed within OHE.

The students–mostly minority women–were locked out of their classes when Larson failed to reach an agreement for a teach-out that would have allowed then to complete the academic period. The Stone closing has generated heated accusations and performative press conferences, but no immediate relief for students trying to grab a rung on the ladder of advancement.

Stone has waited for a restive calm to return before beginning its fightback. That has begun.

Published March 30. 2023.

Chief Justice Richard Robinson has filled the two vacancies created by the mysterious mass resignation of members of the Public Defender Services Commission. He appointed Judge Shelia Prats and retired Justice Richard Palmer to restore confidence in a vital state agency that has been racked with fear and vengeance since the appointment of Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis last year.

The appointment of Prats will be be widely hailed as adding a resolute member who will not buckle in the face of intimidation in upholding the rule of law. Public defenders should begin to feel that they are no longer bereft of a protector.

Palmer’s route to the Supreme Court was paved with tennis courts. A former prosecutor, Palmer was a tennis partner of then-Governor Lowell P. Weicker, when the one-term A Connecticut Party governor appointed him to the high court. Palmer served on it until he turned the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Published March 29, 2023.

Four members of the Public Defender Services Commission resigned before resolving a complaint from the agency’s former human resources complaint against Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis. Erin Ryan’s eight-page February 13th letter to the Commission reveals a poisonous atmosphere at the state agency that represents indigent criminal defendants. She describes instances of “bullying,” “continuous and inappropriate belittling.” “aggressive,” “rude” and “abusive behavior.”

Ryan’s letter alleges that Bowden-Lewis told her not to disclose to the Commission that a “senior attorney in the Division” was facing “a multi-day suspension following an investigation completed by the Judicial Branch….” Bowden-Lewis suggested that [Ryan would] be undermining her authority and would be insubordinate if I said anything to the Commission about this personnel matter.” Ryan wrote that Bowden-Lewis told her that if she did disclose the matter to the Commission at its meeting she would “deal with those consequences tomorrow.”

Ryan concluded that she understood a claim by Bowden-Lewis that Ryan believed a colleague but not her was “a suggestion that I am a racist.” Bowden-Lewis is Black. Ryan is White. Ryan replied that her comments had “nothing to do with believing her and that I would follow her directive, but that stylistically, I disagreed with the approach and would prefer to be more transparent.”

The Commission, according to Ryan, had not been informed of the disciplinary matter at the time she submitted her comprehensive complaint.

Ryan, who has left the agency, concluded with a warning. “A handful of the remaining veteran employees have spoken to me about their desire to leave the agency, and I fear how decimated offices will be if the remaining veteran staff are to leave. Morale is incredibly and dangerously low and people feel disillusioned; work performed by the employees of the Division is very difficult, and the current environment is only making the work more challenging, if not downright unbearable.”

Two of the four recent vacancies will be filled by judges, but not the other two. One of them ought to go to Ryan, who has demonstrated courage while others have indulged only in silence or cryptic explanations. This is what a member of the Commission, with its duty to oversee the operation of an important state agency, should be willing to state: “I felt it was my duty to bring these matters to the Commission’s attention, trusting they will be addressed and remediated.”

Ryan is one of two public defender employees to have filed formal complaints about Bowden-Lewis’s conduct. The thick atmosphere of fear will not be lifted until the vacancies on the Commission are filled with resolute members who will not buckle in the face of intimidation. Members who understand their duties and are committed to honoring them and the more that 400 employees of the agency who perform a vital service .

Published March 28, 2023.

Members of the state public defenders union will face a disorienting truth when they meet on Thursday to confront a crisis in leadership at their $60 million agency. They are on their own as they seek to maintain the rules that govern the more than 400 lawyers in their division. Four of the six members of the Public Defenders Services Commission resigned last week after receiving a menacing March 6th letter from a lawyer retained by Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis.

The Commission had been exercising its authority and performing its oversight obligations. Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer accused the members of using disagreements with her client as creating a “pretext for discrimination.” Four members of the Commission, including Chair Allison Near, resigned. The letter is consistent with The Courant’s Ed Mahony’s reporting in his essential Sunday story on the turmoil at the agency. “Bowden-Lewis sees everything through the lens of racism,” a public defender told Mahony. “The problem is that anyone who pushes back on her is a racist. And that is what she has done to the commission. And that’s what she has done to many other people.” This appears to be the cost of taking a stand in opposition to Bowden-Lewis.

The two judges who quit the oversight board provided only cryptic explanations in their letters of resignation to Chief Justice Richard Robinson. Near told Governor Lamont, who appointed her to the position, that she was finding the demands on her time were intruding on her obligations to her clients.

None of the four has explained the mass resignation. Public defenders have lost their guarantee that rules will be followed. They must act.

When the frontline criminal lawyers for the indigent meet in two days they will need to set their course. The new members of the Commission will be chosen soon. It’s essential that those members are committed to facing down attempts to intimidate them as they oversee the agency of more than 400 lawyers and support staff. Union members must impress upon Chief Justice Robinson, Governor Lamont and Senate President Martin Looney that public defenders are working in a growing atmosphere of intimidation and retribution, as Mahony reported.

The public defenders need to bring their courtroom skills to this critical moment by presenting specific instances of abuse of norms to Robinson, Lamont and Looney as they consider their appointments. They should make it clear that, as Daryl McGraw, the agency’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion wrote in a prophetic email to the agency’s staff, “Some behaviors are long overdue for being addressed, and it’s time to completely rid the Division of them.”

Public defenders know how to make their own case and dismantle an opposing one. On Thursday, they will decide if they are willing to take the risks required to preserve the integrity of their agency. They can summon the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, who told the 1940 Democratic National Convention, “This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals.”

The stakes are highest for the agency’s thousands of clients. They depend on the state’s merit system to provide them with the most qualified lawyers who have access to essential resources. It’s their fight too.

Published March 28, 2023.

Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis hired employment law firm Madsen, Prestley & Parenteau to accuse the Public Defender Services Commission of “hyper-scrutiny and undermining her decisions is a pretext for discrimination.” The bombshell accusations in the March 6th letterwere leveled against the Commission that appointed Bowden-Lewis to the top position in the state agency last year.

The letter, posted above, sets forth Bowden-Lewis’s grievances at the Commission’s oversight, as authorized by statute. Howard complains, “There has also been no movement on the Chief Public Defender’s expressed desire to create an External Affairs Unit to heighten visibility and support for public defenders.” The Commission, in the exercise of its authority, has declined to create a public relations unit for a public law firm that represents indigent defendants. The Commission and others believe the idea is an imprudent and unnecessary use of limited resources. Policy disagreements in government happen all the time and have nothing to do with discrimination.

Howard’s letter concludes with the information “that two separate investigations have been initiated against the Chief Public Defender, without any information provided to her, we ask that you share all documents concerning Ms. [Erin] Ryan’s complaint [against Bowden-Lewis], the investigation into Ms. Ryan’s complaint; the investigation into Leonie Campbell’s complaint; and preserve all evidence concerning these investigations.”

On Friday afternoon, Bowden-Lewis took a distinctly different tone in a statement sent to Daily Ructions by email. “Recent news stories have reported on the Division of Public Defender Services, including recent resignations from the Public Defender Services Commission,” she wrote. “I thank those former members for their service, and I am pleased that the Governor’s office intends to work with the other appointing authorities to ensure that the positions are filled.”

New members of the Commission may want to obtain written clarification of who will defend them in the event that Bowden-Lewis continues to make claims of normal policy decisions are a “pretext for discrimination.” Recollections may differ but members of the Commission were alarmed at the lack of support they received from other state agencies in response to the Howard letter, Daily Ructions has learned.

Published March 24, 2023.

The Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team of the Division of Public Defender Services used a private email account (with the name Malcolm Little–Malcolm X’s birth name) in January to accuse the Public Defender Services Commission of undermining Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis and “her choices for who she wants to run the Division.” The message–included below–also makes the risible claim that “Silence is violence.” A strange tenet for lawyers who often stress the value of the Constitutional right to remain silent.

Bowden-Lewis cautioned colleagues in a Friday email not to disclose confidential information as the story of turmoil in the state agency grows. That warning may include details of complaints made about a hostile work environment in the Office of the Chief Public Defender.

All but one member of the commission resigned this week.

Here is the January email from the Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 6:01 PM Malcolm Little <rjccc1619@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello RJCCC

I hope this message finds you well, and that you are all doing well on this day. I thank you for sharing your emails with the executive and being part of the RJCCC. Your work, your support, and your participation mean the world to us, and we are so thankful for each and every one of you. 

I first and foremost would like to apologize for the subterfuge. The executive team felt it was necessary to take certain aspects of the RJCCC off of the Division’s computers because of some of the things we will say today, and some of the concerns we will begin levying against the Commission itself. Before I get ahead of myself, let me begin by explaining why I am writing this email. I am writing this email because the RJCCC executive team, as well as many of its members, are concerned about the treatment of our former tri-chair and Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis. Treatment that is hampering her ability to lead the Division in the way that is right, treatment that is impacting her decisions and in turn us and our colleagues, and treatment that may have serious racist implications for the Commission.

Now, I am not one to throw out baseless allegations, but one must recognize that when there is smoke there is fire, and I am seeing a lot of damn smoke, so there must be a fire and I believe it is only right that more people know about the same smoke that the RJCCC members are seeing left and right. This past November, the Commission had met to interview two candidates for the Derby Public Defender Supervisor Position. TaShun had chosen two very qualified and experienced attorneys, both people of color, one male and one female, to go to the Commission for an opportunity to interview to become the Derby Public Defender. Both interviewed, interviewed well, but before the Commission rendered a decision they asked to postpone their choice until December of 2022.

December of 2022 comes, and the new Derby Public Defender is chosen, and  the individual chosen is neither of the people of color that were sent to the Commission by TaShun, but instead a white woman from the Derby Public Defender’s Office. Now, while this woman is more than qualified for the position, and will surely do a fine job within the position, there are some concerns that the executive team have with this decision by the Commission. Chiefly, this decision in undermining TaShun and her choices for who she wants to run the Division. 

The decision to choose this other candidate for the Derby Public Defender seems like it was done outside the auspices of TaShun. The Commission interviewed two other candidates for the Derby Public Defender position, both of which were white women, and ultimately chose a white woman over equally or more qualified candidates that were people of color.  Now I mention experience and qualifications because if the Commission felt that their choice represented a more experienced and more qualified individual, then their choice would make sense, however, that is not the case. Both candidates that were chosen by TaShun had as much, if not more experience, including more trial experience, than the candidate that was ultimately chosen to be the Derby Public Defender. So how does a less qualified white woman receive a supervisor position over equally or more qualified candidates that are people of color? I think it is important that the RJCCC finds out that answer, and the reasons for that answer.

Regardless of their intent in their decision, the impact of the Commission is real, and we see a white woman receiving a position over equally and/more qualified candidates that are people of color. Now, I have spoken to many people about this, and it seems like this might be part of a bigger effort to undermine TaShun and the work that she is trying to do within the Division. The work to create more diversity, to encourage lawyerying, and just to change the Division for the better. While  she is well loved by the RJCCC, apparently that same opinion is not held by the rest of the Division, and especially Hartford, and there are people that are actively undermining her and her abilities day in and day out. 

There are people within the Division, within the Commission that want us to just be happy with “giving” us TaShun as a Chief and Daryl as a DEI director. They want us to sit down and shut up and not complain in the face of the racist systems that are impacting and infecting our very own Division. The very things they ask us to combat day in and day out are very well happening within the Division, and this is the biggest cause for concern. How do we stand in the face of these systemic issues that exist within our own job? We do not. We do not abide. We do not remain complicit in silence or otherwise. Silence is violence, and us not talking about these issues will hurt our co-workers, our colleagues, our friends, and our future within this Division.

While no specific plan has been etched out, the executive team is looking to do some things to find out from the Division and the Commission what is going on and to hold them accountable if anything untoward is going on. To make sure that we remove any racist systems that are still infecting our Commission and our Division. To make sure that this never happens again. The only thing we ask of you is to start a conversation. Start asking why our offices don’t always reflect the communities we represent. Start asking why it took so long for the Commissionto hirea black female Chief Public Defender. Start asking the harder questions to make what is going on make sense. And when it does not make sense, and their answers are not up to snuff, you know that is when we have to change. 

I thank you all for reading and taking the time out of your day to go over this. I deliberately did not use names to keep confidence with those who I spoke with. I assure you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more stories, more colleagues, more people within the RJCCC and without that have been impacted by the racism, both passive and active, that exist within the Division and within the Commission, and we can no longer leave these stories on deaf ears.  Please, I ask you, open up your hearts and your minds to these stories, and speak up for your colleagues when things are going down, because all we have is each other.

Thank you

Sincerely,

Racial Justice and Cultural Competency Committee Executive Team

Published March 24, 2023.

An update on the astonishing events at the Public Defender Services Commission this week. All but one member of the commission have resigned. Former state Representative William Dyson, appointed by the House Minority Leader, is the only remaining member, Daily Ructions can report.

Exchanges between Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis and commission members have grown from acrimonious to belligerent. Two recent commission meetings, scheduled for March 7th and March 21st (a special meeting) were cancelled amid growing disputes between Bowden-Lewis and the commission that appointed her last year. The last time the commission met, it spent 2 1/2 hours in an executive session. Curiously, the commission voted to table the approval of its January 10th executive session minutes.

Bowden-Lewis, whose office did not return a call from Daily Ructions early Thursday, has been at odds with the commission over the exercise of its oversight authority. Questions about certain expenditures by the Office of the Chief Public Defender have not been happily received or promptly answered. Members who received a harsh letter from counsel for Bowden-Lewis resigned this week.

No one becomes a member of the Public Defender Services Commission, including judges and distinguished professionals who have devoted their careers to criminal justice, to gain an advantage in the Connecticut hackerama of political plums. These are serious people who want indigent criminal defendants to receive the legal services our system of justice guarantees them. For all but one member of the commission to resign and leave the system without supervision means a series of travesties preceded their leave-taking.

Published March 23, 2023.

Members of the Public Defender Services Commission resigned this week and no one wants to provide details. Superior Court Judge Laura F. Baldini provided a suggestion of the turmoil at the state agency in her March 22nd resignation letter. “My decision to resign is made after careful reflection and consideration,” Baldini wrote. “Given present circumstances, if I were to remain as a member of this Commission, I would no longer be able to fulfill my statutory obligations.”

Baldini, who was nominated to the bench by former Governor M. Jodi Rell, concluded her letter to Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson with an offer to provide more details. “Please contact me if you wish to discuss the substance of this letter.” Robinson appointed Baldini and Judge Kevin S. Russo to the commission on September 29, 2021.

Baldini’s resignation came a day after the commission’s chair, New Haven lawyer Alison M. Near, sent her resignation letter to Governor Ned Lamont. Near, who Lamont appointed on July 29, 2021, told the governor, “Over the past several months, I have experienced great difficulty in balancing my obligations to my law practice with the responsibility of ensuring that the rights of indigent defendants–the clients of the Division–are protected. I have needed to devote a substantial portion of my time to the work of the Commission, and that work has taken critical time away from my existing clients.”

Near is a partner at the law firm Jacobs & Dow, LLC.

A message left with the Office of the Chief Public Defender Thursday morning had not elicited a response. TaShun Bowden-Lewis was appointed to the top job at the agency in 2022.

Published March 23, 2023.