By: Lydia Crawley The Parsons Advocate
Tucker County Commission President Mike Rosenau and Tucker County Commission Administrator Shelia DeVilder visited Preston County April 23rd to learn about the County’s Public Defender Corporation that will be partnering with Tucker County as part of the new Preston-Tucker County Circuit Court.
“We will now be part of the Public Defender Corporation,” Rosenau said.
DeVilder said that the Public Defender Corporation exists to provide legal services to those who cannot afford legal representation themselves. The Public Defender Corporation is part of the Public Defender Services (PDS), a state agency under the Department of Administration that funds all indigent defense for the State of West Virginia. Representation is provided, according to the organization’s website by two methods: private attorneys on a court-appointed basis and full-time public defenders at public defender corporations.
“They provide services to what they consider indigent people in the court system that can not afford attorney services. They are provided through the State,” DeVilder said.
Tucker County never had a centralized service for legal representation of the indigent prior to the agreement with Preston County. It is a situation that is the same across West Virginia. While the statutory framework contemplates the operation of a public defender corporation in every judicial circuit in the state, the website says, only 19 Public Defender Corporations are operating in 20 of the 30 judicial circuits. In the remaining circuits, like Tucker County before, the courts rely on private attorneys to represent those who cannot afford representation.
“We’d never had that in Tucker County and there are several counties in West Virginia that do not have that,” Rosenau said.
DeVilder said that Tucker County had taken care of those who could not pay for representation prior to the agreement with Preston County. In the past, Tucker County would contact independent attorneys to represent the indigent so that everyone was represented, but there was no central office for the service.
“We had attorneys, but we called them independently, so people were represented by attorneys that were unable to pay in the past, but now we will be part of the public defender office that will handle all of those calls versus calling independent attorneys,” DeVilder said.
Beginning January 1, Tucker County was partnered with Preston County in a new Judicial Circuit that saw it moved from a Circuit with Mineral and Grant Counties. The Circuit with Preston County gives Tucker County access to Preston’s Public Defender Corporation.
“They gave us a break down on what they do and we learned a lot today,” Rosenau said.
