Legal Question in Criminal Law in Indiana

changing court appointed public defender

My son is incarcerated on a class b felony. So far he has been in jail approximately 2 months. He is going to have a pretrial court hearing on Oct. 9. We are not satisfied with his court appointed public defender, as he does not return our phone calls and does not really help our son's case much at all. He will not accept phone calls from our son in jail and so therefore our son is left with unanswered questions and fear out of just plain not knowing what to expect. We (his parents) are frustrated and do not know what to expect either. My question is this. Can our son fire this court appointed attorney and hire another one of our choice or possibly the court would appoint him another one? If so, how does our son or us go about accomplishing this? Thank you.


Asked on 9/25/02, 10:19 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Ralph Tambasco Tambasco & Associates,P.C. Attornenys at Law

Re: changing court appointed public defender

Your concern and frustration are quite understandable. You must also realize by this time that the Public Defender has a great case load which often results in what you are currently experiencing.

You may retain private counsel in lieu of the public defender. A private attorney will no doubt be able to give the case greater attention and would likely be more responsive to you then what you have been used to. However, it is not very likely that the court will appoint a new public defender to the case.

If you would like to discuss this in greater detail you are more then welcome to contact my office at 317 686-0000. Please make reference to this email from lawguru when you call.

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Answered on 9/26/02, 1:49 pm


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