Macomb County highlights new facility for the public defender, plans to keep hiring more attorneys

Mount Clemens — Macomb County leaders showed off a brand-new space for the county’s Office of the Public Defender, complete with spacious office areas and modern decor, at an event Friday morning.

The Office of the Public Defender outgrew its former space, so it moved into a new one in November. The new facility is a 9,640-square-foot space next to the county’s election department and probation office.

Macomb County is new to having a public defender — the office was formed in 2020.

“I think the county was really set at a disadvantage for people that were disadvantaged and didn’t have opportunities to really defend themselves in court,” Hackel said at event Friday that recognized the opening of the new facility on Market Street in Mt. Clemens.

The office was established following the creation of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission under Gov. Rick Snyder in 2013. The commission, which funded the renovations to the public defender’s new space, creates and implements minimum standards for the provision of indigent defense services, according to the county’s website. The Macomb County Charter, which was adopted by voters in 2009, also includes a provision for an Office of the Public Defender.

A 2008 report by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association declared indigent defense in Michigan a constitutional crisis. The 10-county study found that Michigan failed "to provide competent representation to those who cannot afford counsel in its criminal courts.”

When Macomb County’s public defender office started, it only had two attorneys aside from Public Defender Thomas Tomko. It has since grown to a staff of nine attorneys and six staff members.

The staff was working from a 1,650-square-foot office space, which was too small. So the county found another space — in the same shopping center — for the Office of the Public Defender. The county renovated the space in a $1.2 million project for which construction began in January 2023.

The facility includes office space for Tomko, his office assistants and attorneys as well as a break room and three restrooms – two more than before. The facility also includes office space for the two social workers the public defender is planning to hire.

Tomko said at the Friday event that these social workers can help defendants with things they need, like finding housing or a job, before they go in front of a judge.

“That person, when they go in front of the judge, they look way different, and prison might not be the way to go,” he said, “whereas, without that service — without getting a social worker involved to make that client really look better — they might be going in the wrong direction.”

Tomko said his office administrates the district courts in Romeo, New Baltimore and Shelby Township. Their new space will allow for the growth of the office, as it could accommodate 38 employees.

The office has a goal of ultimately handling 25-30% of the felony indigent defense cases in Macomb County. It will continue assigning the rest of the cases to local, private attorneys.

The new facility also has a multimedia training room, where attorneys can complete some of the continuous training they are required to do. Tomko said there wasn’t such a space in his agency's previous office.

The office is also starting a fellowship program, facilitated by Wayne State University Law School and the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, that will kick off this summer.

“The program will work with students studying to be social workers and students studying to be attorneys, teaching them to take a broader holistic approach to indigent defense,” Tomko said in a news release. “This will ultimately improve the quality of defense, it will level the playing field when it comes to sentence recommendations, and it will reduce recidivism of indigent clients.”

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