Politics, Public Interest

With Public Defenders Like These, Who Needs Prosecutors?

After sexual harassment allegations and multiple citations of ineffective assistance, maybe there's something wrong with this office.

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Matt Shirk

Matt Shirk

As Florida Republicans go to the polls on August 30, those in Jacksonville will have the opportunity to renominate Matt Shirk for the role of 4th Judicial Circuit Public Defender. Objectively, they shouldn’t do that. Realistically, they probably will. [UPDATE: Actually, I’ve learned that there is hope on this count. Charlie Cofer, an alum of the public defender’s office and a sitting county court judge, retired to run against Shirk in the Republican primary. He’s polling well… we’ll see how this turns out.]

Between the Florida Commission on Ethics recommendation that he resign immediately and the fact that his principal lieutenant, Refik Eler, has, a recent report notes, “been cited four times by Florida appellate courts for providing ineffective counsel — failure to investigate, failure to call proper witnesses, and encouraging clients not to argue that they have reduced culpability due to a mental disease or defect — all in death-penalty cases,” there isn’t a lot on paper to recommend Shirk’s continued employment as the last line of defense for the indigent accused.

Amazingly, the call for his resignation actually had less to with his representation of indigent clients — though concerns over violating attorney-client privilege were cited — than this wild set of allegations:

He was investigated by the Florida Commission on Ethics for a number of violations. One of the most severe involved hiring three attractive young women, aggressively flirting with them, and then firing them after his wife came to work, threatened the women, and issued an ultimatum: that Shirk get rid of all three or she would file for divorce. According to the testimony, Shirk was overly friendly with the women and sent them sexually suggestive texts and e-mails, including a request for one woman to “hurry back” because he and another female employee were “getting into the shower” — Shirk’s personal office shower, which he had built with city funds that had been earmarked for other purposes in the new office’s construction. (He’s now being sued by at least one of the women for terminating her employment.) The Florida Commission on Ethics suggested that Shirk resign immediately.

He declined their invitation to resign and Governor Rick Scott, America’s highest elected THX 1138 extra, also declined to force Shirk out.

Looking back, one might have questioned Shirk’s fitness for this particular job description when he ran on a pledge of never questioning the testimony of the police as a matter of policy, an apparent exemption to the obligation of zealousness of which no one was aware. But he promised to cut the office’s meager budget — which he managed to do justifiably by introducing videoconferencing… and perhaps less justifiably when, as he is proud of noting, “he consistently returns money to the state earmarked for the investigation of mitigation evidence for death-penalty clients” — and cutting back a few pennies on the dollar at the expense of poor potential criminals is easy electoral politics.

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It’s also why the job probably shouldn’t be turned over to the mob, but this is Florida and we should be lucky Tallahassee saw fit to place even this veneer of legitimacy between Cooter and his drunken posse meting out justice between rousing choruses of Sweet Home Alabama.

But that’s why, in a county that leads the state in sending African-Americans to prison, the person charged with the defense of the indigent goes around Tweeting about Obama’s Muslim ties. He’s not putting the public he directly serves at ease, but he doesn’t need the trust of those he serves, only the majority of voters in the county who will enthusiastically vote for anyone who boasts of cutting back on unnecessary defense expenses like the “investigation of mitigation evidence.”

Shirk was just the first Republican smart enough to realize that the same voters handing big victories to prosecutors promising to mount heads on pikes as a warning to others, would then keep voting down the ballot for a public defender campaigning on never questioning the police and cutting back on death penalty investigations. Maybe the problem in Florida isn’t one prosecutor and his office shower of shame, but the fact that Florida’s even electing this position at all.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Is Angela Corey the Cruelest Prosecutor in America? [The Nation]
Public Defender Matt Shirk apologizes; Florida Ethics Commission finds probable cause that he violated policies [Florida Times-Union]

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Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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