Before criminal defense attorney Jennifer Harjo opened New Hanover County’s first Public Defender’s  office, local attorneys – including  Harjo – opposed the establishment of the office. They were skeptical that indigent clients would get as good  representation from a public defender as they would from a private attorney, many of whom were referred by the court, she said.

But after a series of meetings between the local bar association  and the state’s Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) which  oversees the public defender offices, local attorneys began to warm up to the idea of a public defender’s office  in New Hanover County.

In December 2007, Harjo was appointed New Hanover County Public Defender (District 5) by  Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Allen Cobb. Harjo’s office on Chestnut and Fourth Street is one of 16 public defender’s offices in the state. Including Harjo, the 11 staff attorneys handle about 5,250 cases a year in New Hanover County.

Harjo first became interested in criminal law while listening to the  stories of attorneys who represented her father and three others from the Muscogee or Creek tribe in a lawsuit in Tulsa, Okla. Her father won the lawsuit. And it changed the process  in which the tribe’s chief was elected. Harjo went on to study law at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.

Today, despite the tight state  budget that threatens to furlough her staff, Harjo plans to add two attorneys by the end of the year, she said. According to IDS, cases of Abuse/Neglect/Termination of Parental Rights cost the state over $10.9 million to assign private counsel in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, slightly higher than the cost of capital trials, which cost over $10.5 million. By adding an assistant public defender who will handle Department of Social Services custody cases, Harjo hopes to lower the cost of such cases for the state.

Her office tallies the number of cases on a monthly basis and posts each attorney’s productivity in a bar graph for all of the staff to see.

“It’s not about the numbers, but it’s good to know,” she said. The number of cases varies among the staff depending on the type of cases they are working on, with misdemeanors often taking less time than felonies.

“Our office is full of experienced trial lawyers, some of the most  brilliant legal minds,” she said.

Among them is Nora Hargrove, who has practiced law in North Carolina since 1977 when she was  one of three women attorneys in her district.

Harjo said, “It was a challenge for some clients to be represented by a woman,” She also recalls when judges would appoint female attorneys to only misdemeanor cases such as shoplifting. But times have changed and judges now assign serious cases, including capital cases, to them, she said.

Hargrove, a former assistant  public defender in Wake County, has written about 250 appeals, including five death penalty cases post-conviction, since 1981. According to Harjo, the experience of arguing before the North Carolina Court of Appeals or the North Carolina Supreme Court makes attorneys better at their jobs. That’s how she learned.

“They need to know the appellate procedure,” Harjo said. But nowadays there are fewer opportunities for public defenders to write the appeals that can inform opinions for future rulings. Instead appeals are handled by the appellate defenders office in Durham.

One of Harjo’s goals is for her office to take up a couple of appeals. She would like her staff to take a  step back and litigate a few appeals because of the professional enhancements that experience would give them, she said. If it was an especially long trial, the assistant public defender who had worked on it would already have an understanding of the case, which would save time during the appeals process.

Harjo would also like to see more minority attorneys in Wilmington,  she said. Since most of the people her office represents are minorities, she  has contacted Central University’s law school to ask for assistance in hiring with diversity in mind, she said.

“I think it would be frightening  for a minority (client) to walk into an office full of people different from them,” she said.

Although the number of female attorneys is about equal to the number of male lawyers in Wilmington, racial diversity in the legal field is still lacking here, she said.