Does anyone have a regular mental health public defender, either by contract or as a county employee, instead of just doing court appointments in civil mental commitment cases? If so, we'd like to hear about it, since one of our judges is considering it. Good idea, or bad? Thanks!

Ann: A few sessions ago, we re-wrote the Wichita County Public Defender statute to include mental committments. It wasn't long until the mountain of pre-trial motions came in, and a mulitude of appeals. I think the MH judges quit appointing them within a few months after the statute was enacted.

We do better with a "short list" of 10-12 attorneys who are experienced in this area of the law, and can evaluate a case quickly, and especially are good at "client-control".

A, we have a list of 4/5 attorneys willing to take Mental Health Apptmts. Each attorney agrees to take all the Mental Health apptmts for the month. For example Atty A takes the month of January, Atty B takes the month of February...and so on. It works well for our caseload. We work, on the average, 8-10 cases a week. We have set days for Probable Cause Hearings and set days for Finals and Med Hearings. Rarely do we have to conduct business on unscheduled days, but if we do it still seems to work well for us.

That's not unlike what we have done for years; a lawyer gets appointed for all or part of a week's docket. It seems to have worked well for us, too.