Expert defense: Assisting the indigent

JOLIET -- On a sunny fall morning, Frank Astrella went out the back door of his office and turned toward the courthouse.

Lea Norbut and Greg DeBord walked with him. Once high-ranking managers in the Will County state's attorney's office, Norbut and DeBord recently moved from one side to the other, leaving the prosecution to take similar positions with Astrella, the Will County public defender. Now DeBord is chief of the felony division, and Norbut is chief of professional development. They'll also try cases.

The group had already spent part of the morning in Astrella's office talking about their clients, a list that grows daily. By that afternoon, for example, the three people accused of killing a man and dumping his body in Joliet's Pilcher Park had become part of their case load.

Now it was time to see what was happening in the courtrooms.

Before getting too far down Scott Street, they ran into a group of young assistants who were on the way back to the office from court.

"Eric Berg won another trial yesterday," announced Gail Bembnister, one of the assistant public defenders. "It's got to be 10 in a row. He's got a streak going."

After chatting about Berg's success in Will County Judge Jim Egan's courtroom, they went their separate ways. After the morning court call, the assistants return work on their cases, perhaps dropping by the Will County Jail to meet with clients, Norbut explained.

When they arrived at the courthouse, the group took the elevator to the fourth floor. Outside Will County Judge Carla Alessio Policandriotes' courtroom, two young girls spotted Astrella.

"You a lawyer?" one asked.

Astrella said he was. As she grabbed his arm, he quietly explained that as the Will County public defender, she couldn't simply hire him.

But if she could, her case would be in good hands. Astrella, Kankakee County's former first assistant state's attorney, is highly regarded in the local legal community, as are DeBord, Norbut, First Assistant Public Defender Alex Bonds and the rest of the staff.

Although some of their clients don't understand their work and often ask if the public defenders are bona fide lawyers -- yes, they are -- they are experienced litigators.

"I think we do have a great staff," said Will County Chief Judge Gerald Kinney, one of the people who chose Astrella for the position. "You can sit in a felony courtroom, and defendants will say, 'I'm going to get someone else instead of a public defender,' and you wonder, why would they be doing that?"

Besides the staff of full-time lawyers, the office also has a group of part-timers who are among the who's who of the Will County bar: veteran attorneys George Lenard, Alex Beck, Dan Kennedy, Michelle Hansen and Ed Jacquays, among others.

"They'll say, 'I'll hire a real lawyer,'" Kinney continued. "As a judge, you can't interfere and say, 'The guy or girl standing next to you has tried 15 murder cases and is as good as anyone you can find' ... They are some of the top criminal defense lawyers in the community."

Now that DeBord and Norbut are on staff, the office also has an unusual advantage: Most of higher management has spent time prosecuting cases, so they know the state's tactics in the courtroom.

The Will County public defender's office represents a specific group: the indigent who have been accused of crimes that could result in jail or prison time. But you can't just walk into their office and ask for their services. A judge appoints the public defenders, after reviewing each defendant's financial situation.

And they can prevail. Eric Berg, the assistant public defender who recently won several in a row, is a perfect example. The 32-year-old graduate of the law school at the University of Illinois recently has done well with cases involving driving under the influence of drugs. But he has won others, too. One of them involved criminal trespass to a motor vehicle, he explained. A young woman accused two young men -- people she'd recently met -- of taking her car. Berg represented one of the men and argued that she'd actually given him permission to use it.

When the incident happened, she waited some time before calling the police, he said. And the two young men had her car keys.

"I think the fact that she waited five hours (before her mother called the police) was a little unbelievable," Berg said. Apparently the jury agreed.

When he became the public defender a year ago, Astrella had several goals.

"I wanted to bring us in the 21st century with technology," he said. When he took the job, there were just a handful of computers in the office and everyone shared them. "We now have computers for almost all the lawyers, so everyone can do their own research at their work station," he said.

His also wanted to start an in-house training program for the newer assistants.

"We can accomplish that with Greg and Lea, and get our young people ready for any kind of trial," Astrella said. "I really think our office could become a model for the others in the state. The three of us are in court, trying cases, and we can train the staff. That doesn't happen in any other county."