Life as a Public Defender
BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. -- The fishing pole that Jamie Shelby was accused of stealing from Walmart cost $37.96. Mr. Shelby couldn't afford the fishing pole so it was no surprise that he couldn't post the $1500 bond that he was being held on. With no way to get out of jail Mr. Shelby spent over two weeks incarcerated for this petit theft.
Mr. Shelby is homeless. He is in need of a hip replacement and he has a dislocated shoulder from the day he tried to make some money hauling concrete. He said he wanted a fishing pole so he could catch something to eat instead of having to beg on a street corner for money. Of course this is no excuse to steal but I thought 15 days in the county jail was more than enough punishment for this crime.
The morning Mr. Shelby was scheduled to appear in court I arrived with the plea form already filled out. I was sure that that prosecutor would agree to resolve this case with time served.
How wrong I was. The prosecutor responded by telling me she would not offer Mr. Shelby time served. She went on to inform me that just before she arrived in court she had changed the charge from a second degree misdemeanor to one in the first degree. In Florida a second degree misdemeanor is punishable by up to sixty days in jail while a first degree misdemeanor carries a maximum punishment of a year in jail.
The prosecutor wanted Mr. Shelby to spend 180 days in jail -- six months -- for stealing the fishing pole. The reason she was able to change the charge was because this wasn't the first time Mr. Shelby was arrested for theft.
I was dumbfounded -- 180 days for a fishing pole? The prosecutor thought her offer was justice. I thought it was excessive. I knew we would have to agree to disagree because there was no way my client was accepting such an offer.
At that point I started to think about the economic impact of this sentence. According to published reports, it costs about $80 a day house an inmate in a Broward County Jail. (That number goes up to about $130 a day if the person has mental health issues) Punishing Mr. Shelby the way the prosecutor wanted to would cost about $14,400. With that money the government could buy and distribute 379 fishing poles.
I didn't make this argument to the judge. I didn't have to. I told the judge that we wanted to resolve the case but that wasn't going to happen based on the state's offer of 180 days. The judge asked the prosecutor to tell her about Mr. Shelby's criminal record. After hearing his prior charges, the judge correctly assumed we wanted to invite the court into negotiations -- it's an option when the two sides can't agree, and the client wants to resolve the case.
I knew the judge would keep things in proper perspective, and she did. The offer from the bench in exchange for a plea, was time served.
Done. Mr. Shelby got out of jail that day, thousands of taxpayer dollars were saved and Walmart had their $37.96 fishing pole back on the shelf.
The high profile trials of Manuel Noriega, Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson and George Zimmerman are among the important legal stories Kim Segal covered as a journalist for over two decades. While working as a producer for CNN, she began attending law school at night, and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2005.
At 46, she left her television career for a position as a Public Defender in Broward County, Florida.