By Jan Pudlow
Senior Editor

Carrie Lee was only 18 when she started working as an investigator for the 10th Circuit Public Defender’s Office and would come home and announce: “I was in the jail today.”

“My mom would say, ‘Poor baby.’”

But Lee thrived on the rich experience of helping others that continued after law school. For more than six years at the Ninth Circuit Public Defender’s Office, she handled all aspects of criminal defense and appeals, including serving as lead attorney with the juvenile division.

Now Lee, a longtime child advocate, has found the perfect job mixing social and legal work as the new director of the Juvenile Justice Center at Barry University’s Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law. She is also spearheading pilot projects funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Models for Change.

“I love doing what I do now. There are days I miss helping kids directly, but now I am able to help kids indirectly,” Lee said.

“We are hoping to do all of this to improve the advocacy of attorneys for children in delinquency court. We want to do some great systemic change around the state.”

Changes are needed, children’s advocates agree.

Two years ago, 22 observers from Florida and the U.S. visited juvenile courts in 15 urban, suburban, and rural counties in half of the state’s 20 judicial circuits. They watched courts in action and interviewed judges, defense counsel, probation officers, prosecutors, and other juvenile court personnel. It was all part of a National Juvenile Defender Center project requested by the Florida Supreme Court, The Florida Bar, and the Florida Public Defender Association.

One glaring need was for better training for juvenile attorneys in a specialized area of the law, rather than flinging new attorneys into juvenile court as a training ground. These rookie public defenders are often reassigned before they fully grasp the job. The assessment found that too often children were pleading guilty just to get their cases over with, not really understanding the ramifications. Those kids who do talk to a lawyer often meet harried, inexperienced juvenile defenders for the first and only time in crowded courtrooms and chaotic hallways.

Lee is on a mission to train assistant public defenders in juvenile court, where the goal is rehabilitation, not punishment.

“Our goal is to meet with elected public defenders, and slowly but surely try to emphasize that you need to keep specialized attorneys. You deal with adolescent brain development and parent issues with adults. There are so many outside issues, other than what are good practices at trial,” said Lee. “There are crossover kids in both the dependency and delinquency system. There are special education issues.”

Lee said she has a listserv of 250 attorneys who can post questions and get help from each other.

“A lot of times, a defender will be in court in a bench trial and ask: ‘What do I do?’ Especially in rural counties, where you only have one attorney assigned to juvenile court, other attorneys are an invaluable resource for them.”

She knows that Florida’s juvenile courts vary from circuit to circuit and county to county. For example, some rural areas, she said, may only have 30 juvenile trials a year, where in Orlando she had 30 juvenile trials in one day.

But there is a constant: Juvenile court is supposed to be a place to help children turn around their lives.

“We like to emphasize that we are not only an advocate and fight for the kid, but we also try to help them and provide services, and see if you can help them in addition to advocating and not just getting them off.”

To reach all public defenders in the state, every month Lee conducts a Learn at Lunch hour-long CLE conference call on a number of topics. One recent session covered the special challenges of defending an increasing number of girls charged with crimes and who are also victims of sexual and physical abuse.

The Juvenile Justice Center also conducts two live seminars a year. The one coming up December 10-12 in Orlando is co-sponsored by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and will give defenders a chance to do opening statements and cross-examination on a case while being videoed; the defenders will receive feedback to improve trial skills.

Currently, there is a pilot project in the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Juvenile Unit taking guidelines of best practices and putting them into action every day. In a year, Lee said, they will evaluate what works and what doesn’t about the new guidelines, created by a group led by Gerry Glynn, director of clinical programs at Barry’s law school, and now pending approval by the Bar’s Legal Needs of Children Committee.

To address the problem of too many kids waiving their right to counsel, Lee said: “We are going to a circuit with relatively high waiver-of-counsel numbers. We would like every child represented by counsel, so we are trying to at least make sure the child has a meaningful opportunity to consult before waiving that right. Most kids now are getting counsel. In some circuits, it’s not even an issue because the judge appoints counsel in every case. . . .But some circuits interpret a meaningful opportunity to consult with an attorney as giving a speech before arraignment. To me, meaningful is having a chat one-on-one and explaining the collateral consequences.”

Court is confusing to kids, and some are low-functioning and don’t realize what they are giving up by pleading out, Lee said. For example, even though a child being found delinquent as a juvenile is not supposed to come up on a background check, it often does, and it’s hard to get hired at a job. If children wind up on a sex offender registration list, they can’t even get licensed to be a hairstylist, Lee said.

“One of the things I’m really excited about is some juvenile defenders have formed a camaraderie. It’s a niche field, and it’s nice for them to know others doing this work,” Lee said of the networking that serves as both training and support group.