Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The future of the Public Defender’s office is now in limbo after the Director of the office, Michael White officially resigned from his post last week.

White, who served at the Public Defender’s Office for 11 years — 4 of these years as a Public Defender — submitted his resignation letter last Thursday and his resignation is effective today, Tuesday, July 5, 2022.

White confirmed to Samoa News that he had submitted his resignation letter and he was the only attorney working for the PD’s office after the departure of the Assistant Public Defender, Ryan Anderson at the beginning of this year.

When asked who is going to handle cases for the PD’s office, White replied, “I don’t know.”

White, who has been a lawyer since 1986 and is from Georgia, told the Fono during his confirmation hearing in 2018 that he came to the territory in 2011 to work as Assistant Public Defender, and was appointed Public Defender and confirmed by the Fono in 2018.

White did not wish to comment on the reason behind his resignation but an inside source offered some comments regarding the problems within the PD’s office.

“With an ever increasing case load — both felony and misdemeanor cases — the PD’s office has petitioned to the Governor’s Office to increase the number of attorneys, budget and staff. However, the request has fallen onto deaf ears,” the source said.

After Anderson’s departure, White was the only PD attorney dealing with court assignments. He handle dDistrict Court matters, High Court matters, and also Juvenile cases.

How the office will proceed at this time is not known. An individual who is familiar with the PD office’s operation told Samoa News that the office needs to hire more attorneys and staff but they don’t know how this going to happen, as there is the question of who has the authority to make these types of decisions.

In addition to the need to hire more attorneys to continue the office’s operation, there is a need to hire investigators to assist the attorneys who are defending the clients.

And not the least of the problems is their only printer is not working and attorneys have to bring their own laptops to work because almost all of the office computers are not working, and attorneys also have to provide their own paper and printing ink.

“The office is now in limbo because the acting PD can't do anything. There’s a shortage of attorneys and there is a need to hire more staff,” the source said.

The problem of shortage of lawyers within the PD’s office is not new. During his confirmation hearing as a Public Defender in 2018, White shared this problem with the Fono. According to White, the PD’s Office was supposed to have four lawyers.

White told the Fono that Public Defender work to him is the most rewarding type of work there is. Helping people who can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and “basically our model in the office is to provide the best legal representation that money cannot buy.”

Lawmakers brought to White’s attention, an issue that has come out of the court — and also reported by Samoa News — of inmates having to wait for a very long time before their cases are even heard in court. Fai’ivae recalled the court referring to a case pending for five years before it even came before the court.

White said that he is “also troubled with” a case pending for five-years or more, and pointed out that “it’s just too long for somebody to be in jail without a trial, or a hearing.”

However, he noted several factors for the long delays, for example, since the COVID-19 restrictions, all jury trials were suspended and “all those cases keep piling up.”

Another issue, is that “we have lawyers leaving unexpectedly,” he said, and gave a brief explanation of why two lawyers had left and returned to the U.S. White said at the time he would ask the governor for an increase in the number of lawyers for the PD Office — from four to five.

He also said that “a lot of times, we don’t get the information from the government in a timely manner. It takes them a long time to get us the information. Once we get it, we look at it, investigate it and unfortunately the wheels of justice are slow.”

“There’s so much at stake, we can’t afford to make a mistake when we’re dealing with people’s lives and their freedom. We can’t rush into things, particularly felony cases.”

BACKGROUND

This is not the first time the PD’s office has faced big problems. In May of 2018, former PD, Douglas Fiaui resigned from his post while he was off-island on a 12-week leave while two of his clients were appearing in High Court for jury trials, and the court had continued both matters because of Fiaui’s absence.

The PD’s office received Fiaui’s resignation letter on the first week of May that year and Fiaui’s resignation shocked the PD’s office. His resignation came four days after Chief Justice Michael Kruse issued an Order to Show Cause (OSC) on why Fiaui shouldn’t be held in contempt of court for not fulfilling his duties as an officer of the court.

Once Kruse received the copy of Fiaui’s resignation letter, he immediately quashed the warrant for an OSC hearing that was issued for Fiaui.