Vol. 72, No. 12, December 1999

Serving the Public

SPD Promotes
Democratic Ideals, Internationally

Promoting democratic ideals through the Gideon Initiative, the Wisconsin State Public Defender's Office provides a model for Israel.

By Dianne Molvig

Hanging on a wall in Nick Chiarkas's office is an enlargement of a photograph he took more than 30 years ago when he was a cop on Manhattan's Lower East Side - long before he became Wisconsin's State Public Defender. The photo shows a street sign for a legal services agency, announcing its free services in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Hebrew. These days that old photo has new significance for Chiarkas, as he and his staff build connections with public defenders from other cultures, through a project called the Gideon Initiative.

In fact, Chiarkas's Israeli counterpart, Chief Public Defender Kenneth Mann, took a copy of that photograph back to Israel with him after a visit to Madison last March. In October, Mann returned to Wisconsin along with nine other attorneys from Israel's Office of the Public Defender for 10 days of idea sharing and training.

Both visits were under the auspices of the Gideon Initiative, named after the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, which established a poor person's right to counsel in criminal prosecution. The Gideon Initiative's mission is "to promote democratic ideals through the advancement of quality public defender programs in the criminal justice systems of existing and emerging democracies throughout the world."

It's a one-step-at-a-time kind of project. A major first step, two years in the making, has been establishing an ongoing teaching/mentoring relationship between the Wisconsin and Israeli public defender offices. The United States and Israel are among the few countries worldwide who have public defender programs, according to Chiarkas. Other democracies that provide counsel for indigent criminal defendants often do so by appointed counsel - a system Israel abandoned because of severe quality problems and high costs. In 1995 the Knesset, Israel's national legislature, passed a law creating a public defender agency.

Growing a Partnership

The roots of the Gideon Initiative date back to July 1997, when American University in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. State Department hosted a meeting of a few invited American public defenders with Mann and three of his staff. The seeds of Israel's public defender program began in a law school seminar taught by Mann at Tel Aviv University; he's on leave from teaching to head up the new agency. Mann requested the Washington meeting to solicit ideas he and his staff could adapt to Israel's fledgling program.

One of the Americans invited to that meeting was Chiarkas. Of all the public defender programs discussed, Mann was most taken by Wisconsin's. Before parting ways, Mann and Chiarkas agreed to stay in regular contact, and a year later, Mann asked Chiarkas to come to Israel to help spread the word about the public defender concept. With funding from the U.S. State Department, Chiarkas embarked on a 10-day tour of Israel, a country about one-sixth the size of Wisconsin, with roughly the same population. Chiarkas brainstormed with Mann's staff and also spoke to judges, prosecutors, and other government justice officials about the importance of public defender programs.

"The questions they had primarily were about how this would improve their quality of justice," Chiarkas says. "I told them that I like to play pool, and if I play with somebody who's good, my game improves. If I play with somebody who's bad, my game drops. Prosecutors say that happens to them, too, depending on who the defense is. I explained that as public defenders get better at what they do, so do the prosecutors and judges. And you provide a better justice system to all citizens."

After Chiarkas's visit to Israel, a reciprocal visit seemed in order to give the Israeli public defenders a first-hand look at Wisconsin's system. The question was how to pay for it. The Gideon Initiative launched a fund-raising effort, with the help of Milwaukee philanthropist Martin Stein, Madison fund-raiser Mark Laufman, and Milwaukee attorneys Nathan Fishbach and Leonard Loeb. The fund got a boost through major donations from Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, Foley & Lardner, Milwaukee attorney Frank Gimbel, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, plus smaller contributions from a host of supporters. With money in hand, plans for the Israelis' visit got under way.

Intensive Training

Upon arrival in Madison in October, the Israeli attorneys launched into a packed 10-day schedule. They spent 12 hours or more each day in classes, visits to Oxford Prison and the Fox Lake Correctional Institute, tours of several Wisconsin public defender offices, a visit to intake court in Milwaukee, a luncheon with state supreme court justices, an evening reception with the governor, and more.

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