Legislator proposes PD office for Prince William

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Prince William County is the only Northern Virginia community without a public defender office, but state Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Mount Vernon, says it’s time for change.

Surovell’s Senate Bill 72, introduced Nov. 23, would establish a public defender office for the county and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

Prince William County is the largest Virginia locality not served by a public defender office, Surovell said.

“We need to offer public defender services to fulfill the constitutional rights of Virginians in our community,” Surovell said in a press release.

Public defender offices are state-funded and staffed by attorneys who provide legal representation to criminal defendants who can’t afford a lawyer. Jurisdictions without public defender offices rely on court-appointed lawyers to represent poor defendants.

The state pays court-appointed attorneys $120 per district court misdemeanor and between $445 and $1,235 for felonies, depending on whether they are ‘non-serious’ or punishable by more than 20 years, according to the Prince William Times.

The new office will cost state taxpayers around $200,000 per year, Surovell said.

Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, the first public defender to serve in the Virginia General Assembly, is expected to introduce an identical bill in the House of Delegates, the paper said.

A Prince William public defender office would likely become one of the largest offices in the state because of the county’s size, comparable to offices in Richmond, Virginia Beach and Fairfax County which employ over 20 full-time attorneys, Maria Jankowski told the paper. She is deputy executive director for the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission.

If the bill is approved, the county board could approve local funding to supplement the state salaries of public defenders. Only four public defender offices – Alexandria, Arlington, Charlottesville and Fairfax – currently receive local funding.

PWC Commonwealth’s Attorney-elect Amy Ashworth said at an Oct. 20 community forum that the addition of a public defender office is “long overdue,” the paper said.

“Our community is too large, too diverse and the cases brought by police too complex to rely upon a small group of attorneys – who volunteer their time basically, because the rate they are being paid is so low – to represent indigent defendants,” Ashworth said.

Ashworth said that as a prosecutor in with the Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office she often faced court-appointed attorneys who were “too busy or too inexperienced” to effectively defend their clients.

There are 32 public defender offices in Virginia serving 53 localities. The last time a new public defenders’ office was established in Virginia was 2005.