On Saturday, December 1st, the Uintah County Commission hired Lance Dean to be the County’s first managing public defender. A press release issued on Thursday explains that the position is part of the restructure and improvements to the Uintah Basin’s indigent defense system. The Utah Indigent Defense Commission has given a grant to Daggett, Duchesne, and Uintah Counties to help improve legal services for representation in criminal cases and juvenile court proceedings for individuals unable to afford it. The goal of the new indigent defense is to be able to hire more attorneys to reduce caseloads and more fully protect the 6th Amendment rights of indigent individual, shares the press release. In the past, Uintah County had fewer then five bids from prospective public defenders. Dean was able to take a few minutes at a legal conference to talk about the need for qualified, committed public defenders in our area and with the grant, the number of applicants jumped to 30. “From that pool of 30 lawyers who submitted proposals, we chose a handful of highly qualified attorneys to begin building our program,” shares Dean. Dean’s managing public defender position has him building the program as well as representing all indigent defendants in Uintah County Justice Court, 8th District Court in Daggett County, and Uintah County Drug Court unless a conflict of interest is identified. This is in hopes to reduce the caseloads for the contract public defenders.
