Perks / Fringe Benefits, Public Interest

Public Defender Arrested Because He's Not A Prosecutor

A community explains that public defenders just don't deserve nice things.

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You see, prosecutors are really important and useful people and public defenders are just the sub-human cannon fodder that gets in the way. At least that’s how authorities in Columbia, SC, seem to see it. Because beneath the surface, this otherwise superficial story of a lawyer allegedly doing something very stupid reveals just how committed governments can be to keeping public defenders down.

Stephen Francis Krzyston, 29, an assistant public defender with the Richland County Public Defender’s office, was arrested for trying to get a gym membership discount:

According to a release from the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, on July 1, 2013, and on October 14, 2014, Krzyston made the false claims in filing out membership applications at Gold’s Gym on Forest Drive each time “to obtain a year’s membership valued at $300.”

“Identity theft is a serious crime,” Sheriff Leon Lott said in a news release.

First of all, I get that “identity theft” is a big scary boogeyword out there to lather up the local media, but let’s get real. This guy’s not stealing anyone’s credit card number. He allegedly tried to get a gym discount by saying that he, Stephen Francis Krzyston, had a different job. That would be some kind of false pretenses fraud and probably some kind of “impersonating a [insert fancy title here]” charge, but can the identity theft stuff.

Specifically, Krzyston allegedly claimed to work for the Sheriff’s Department and the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office (which is South Carolina-speak for the District Attorney’s Office). In any case of impersonating a government official, it’s all about the motive. The obvious follow-up should be, as Sean Connery asks in The Untouchables, “Who would claim to be that who was not?” Someone without a free spin class, that’s who!

So what’s going on here, when you read between the lines of the local media article, is that the county negotiated a gym membership discount perk for some employees, but not its public defenders. OK, I get why the Sheriff’s Department needs this perk — ya gotta work off the donuts somewhere — but why does a prosecutor uniquely need a gym membership vis a vis a public defender?

It’s not breaking news that state and local governments give short shrift to public defenders, whom they consider at best an inconvenience and at worst anarchists plotting to derail the jackboot law and order mythology that penny ante politicians drape themselves in. Everyone knows about the massive disparities in resources available and that public defenders are the first to feel a budgeting pinch. We even know that public defenders — despite lip-service proclaiming them the equal flipside of the coin in representing the people — are systematically underpaid (see, e.g. this). But sometimes it’s the little things that really crystallize how royally broken a system really is.

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They’re denying their public defenders access to a f**king gym membership! This is the extent of South Carolina’s disdain for criminal defense — they won’t spring for a guy to Jazzercise. It’s hard to imagine a more petty microaggression. Maybe something involving parking spaces. Now as far as I can tell, Richland County pays its public defenders roughly comparable salaries to its prosecutors, which is great, but also probably the reason it’s turned to the disparate managing of fringe benefits.

None of this is to condone lying to get perks you’re not entitled to receive. That’s bad and harrumph harrumph and all that. But the motive here seems to be entirely of Richland County’s making and the local media may be uninterested in pointing that out — the story doesn’t even blink at the news that only one agency of the county law-enforcement regime is left out of this deal — but it should spur at least some reflection.

But there won’t be because maintaining that all-important class distinction between prosecutors and defenders is too engrained in the psyche of the community.

Columbia assistant public defender arrested [The State]

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