Allman peers into the small conference room outside an 11th-floor courtroom where a prosecutor normally is stationed to negotiate deals with defense attorneys. But the room is empty. "I'm stalled here," Allman sighs. In a few minutes the prosecutor comes, and she works out a deal whereby the Issaquah man will have his charge dismissed if he completes anger management treatment and undergoes evaluation for alcoholism.
She goes back downstairs to greet an agitated middle-aged woman accused of slapping her teenage daughter, tells her to wait, then heads down to the jail in the courthouse basement to talk with the domestic violence defendant and another client accused of assault. Then, in order to meet with a prosecutor on the latter case, she joins a queue of defense attorneys waiting outside another 11th-floor conference room. "See, I'm stalled again," she says.
Harley Soltes
Attorney Theresa Allman
covers three floors of the muni courthouse, where she’s one of just two attorneys from her firm serving defendants.
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When she finally she gets to talk to the prosecutor about the jailed assault defendant, she rejects the plea offer and walks toward the adjacent courtroom to appear before the judge with her client, whom a bailiff is bringing up from the jail. Then she remembers that she has also told a bailiff in a courtroom downstairs to bring up the domestic violence defendant. She whizzes into the nearby courtroom to tell the first bailiff to hold off, then sprints downstairs to arrive before the domestic violence defendant is called up before the judge. "If they call him up and you're not there, you're in big trouble," she says.
Still left waiting is the client accused of hitting her daughter. Allman eventually grabs a few minutes with her to talk on a hallway bench. They have to decide whether or not to plead, and Allman needs to get up to speed on the case so that she can make her client's case with the prosecutor. But there isn't enough time before the court's lunch break. Allman tells her client they will have to reschedule it for another day.
Such continuances annoy judges, who want efficiency, and present a hardship for clients, many of whom are paid by the hour and will miss more work to come back to court, Allman says. She also maintains that "it affects their level of anxiety when attorneys have too much going on and they see you juggling eight cases and running up and down steps all day."
She says she doesn't think she's ended up doing an injustice to any particular client's case, but it's a struggle. "Back before the change, at least I felt like I had my head above water most days." When the county ran the system, TDA had enough attorneys to assign one to each courtroom.
New contracts are supposed to address this problem. They will assign seven attorneys to the secondary defender and even bring in a third agency. It might ease the workload for all. But it may not save TDA, which still could end up banished from Municipal Court when the new contract winners are announced this spring.
Meanwhile, ACA director Chapman plans to resign after the next bidding process is through. He cites family reasons but also says the politics "left a bad taste in my mouth."
nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
