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More than 100 children charged in Baltimore\u2019s juvenile court<\/a> have waited months for their cases to move forward this year as the Maryland Office of the Public Defender<\/a> struggled to find them private attorneys, according to a city judge. <\/p>\n Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. said the cases of 121 children have been postponed this year because the public defender failed to find them what are known as panel attorneys, or private lawyers brought in to represent someone when the public defender represents someone else charged in the same case.<\/p>\n It\u2019s considered a conflict of interest, and thus unethical, for attorneys from the same firm or agency to represent multiple clients charged in the same case. <\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how many of those children were being held in the custody<\/a> of the state Department of Juvenile Services<\/a> while their cases were stalled. But the figure Taylor cited represents about 12% of juvenile cases in Baltimore this year, according to the Office of Baltimore State\u2019s Attorney Ivan Bates<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of our biggest problems here, just getting cases to trial,\u201d Pamela Chung, chief of Bates\u2019 Juvenile Division, said in an interview. <\/p>\n Taylor called a hearing Wednesday to determine whether to hold the public defender in contempt of court for failures to hire panel attorneys, which he described as an obligation of that office under Maryland law. <\/p>\n He said it has taken an average of 129 days for a panel attorney to enter a case. That\u2019s a problem, he emphasized, because state law says a child is supposed to go to trial<\/a> within 30 days of their first court date if they are detained or 60 days if they are released from custody.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure who is responsible for this failure to provide panel attorneys,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cNo one will tell me what the hell is going on.\u201d <\/p>\n Most hearings in juvenile court are not open to the public, but Wednesday\u2019s was. Upon learning a reporter was present, attorneys for the public defender\u2019s office asked Taylor to close the courtroom, arguing that opening it was meant to make the issue a \u201cpublic spectacle.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to hide the ball on our process,\u201d Deputy Public Defender Keith Lotridge said. \u201cWe\u2019re just not going to talk about it in open court.\u201d <\/p>\n Taylor denied the office\u2019s request to close the courtroom. <\/p>\n While acknowledging there were \u201cfailings,\u201d Lotridge argued that judges have the ultimate authority to appoint attorneys, while the public defender can only ask them.<\/p>\n Taylor countered that the judiciary, unlike the public defender, doesn\u2019t have a specific budget for hiring panel attorneys. <\/p>\n The public defender\u2019s office had a budget of $158 million in fiscal year 2026, while the judiciary\u2019s budget is nearly fivefold, at about $789 million. <\/p>\n Maryland Public Defender Natasha M. Dartigue said in an interview that the \u201creal problem\u201d in Baltimore\u2019s juvenile court is \u201cthe toxic environment that\u2019s created by the bench\u201d is pushing private lawyers away. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cPanel attorneys are volunteers. They accept these cases everywhere else in the state,\u201d Dartigue said. \u201cBut in Baltimore City they flat out say, \u2018No, they are not dealing with the bench.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Defense attorneys Natalie Finegar and Roya Hanna, who regularly do panel cases for the public defender in Baltimore City Circuit Court, typically won\u2019t take juvenile cases. <\/p>\n \u201cI try to avoid it like the plague,\u201d Finegar said in a phone interview. \u201cThey made me take a case about six months ago. It was a horrible experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Added Hanna: \u201cThere\u2019s circuit court chaos, and then there\u2019s juvenile court. It\u2019s just a lot more hectic.\u201d <\/p>\n They cited quick turnarounds with an overwhelming amount of hearings. It also takes time to get a child to open up about what brought them to court and what is going on in their life, which could be relevant to the adjudication of their case. Not to mention explaining to a young person the intricacies of the legal system. <\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the pay, which Finegar said hasn\u2019t been updated in almost a decade. <\/p>\n The public defender\u2019s office pays private attorneys $60 an hour for most cases, including juvenile. Finegar and Hanna described those rates as hardly enough to make ends meet for solo practitioners like them. <\/p>\n \u201cYou need to pay a livable wage,\u201d Finegar said. <\/p>\n Hanna said the public defender\u2019s office should look into aligning its hourly rates with federal Criminal Justice Act Panel, which pays panel attorneys over $150 an hour. <\/p>\n \u201cThe legislature probably needs to pay more attention to it and make the panel rate more close to the federal guidelines,\u201d Hanna said. \u201cI think you\u2019d have more attorneys willing to do panel work.\u201d<\/p>\n Dartigue pushed back on the idea that pay is a prohibiting factor. <\/p>\n She also said overcharging by city prosecutors plays a role in the problem.<\/p>\n Dartigue and Marguerite E. Lanaux, district public defender for Baltimore, said the office has gone to great lengths to attract panel attorneys, despite working on what they described as a shoestring budget. The office recruits at large law firms and those that require pro bono work, and has come up with training for private lawyers unfamiliar with juvenile court. <\/p>\n Finegar and Hanna said the public defender\u2019s office appears desperate for private lawyers. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is daily: \u2018I need a panel attorney, I need a panel attorney, I need a panel attorney,\u2019\u201d Finegar said. \u201cThey\u2019re frantic. They\u2019re begging people to take panels. But they don\u2019t see it from our perspective. Because, unless you\u2019ve experienced it, you don\u2019t understand why some of us are not jumping to do it.\u201d <\/p>\n Chung, of the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office, said it\u2019s not only the children who pay the price for the delays but also victims and witnesses. <\/p>\n \u201cThey feel like they\u2019re not getting justice and don\u2019t show up, so our cases end up getting dismissed,\u201d Chung said, adding she is concerned about public safety. \u201cYou can only hold a youth so long. At some point, the court is going to release them. So, by the time you end up in court, they\u2019ve already picked up new charges.\u201d <\/p>\n In court Wednesday, Taylor expressed frustration. One of the children in the case he was presiding over had waited 210 days for a panel lawyer. In a different case, a child waited more than a year. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not fair to the children. It\u2019s not fair to the victims,\u201d Taylor said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are open to a discussion\u201d outside of court, Lotridge responded. In the meantime, he added, \u201cwe will continue to do the best we can.\u201d <\/p>\n Taylor decided not to hold the office in contempt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n More than 100 children charged in Baltimore\u2019s juvenile court have waited months for their cases to move forward this year as the Maryland Office of the Public Defender struggled to find them private attorneys, according to a city judge. Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. said the cases of 121 children have been postponed this … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/More-than-100-childrens-criminal-cases-stalled-in-Baltimore.JPG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13983,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13981\/revisions\/13983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n 'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n fbq('init', '370542741574753');\n fbq('track', 'PageView');\n\n function formatFbclid(fbclid) {\n const version = 'fb';\n const subdomainIndex = '1';\n const creationTime = Date.now();\n return version + '.' + subdomainIndex + '.' + creationTime + '.' + fbclid;\n }\n\n function getCookie(cname) {\n const name = cname + \"=\";\n const decodedCookie = decodeURIComponent(document.cookie);\n const cookies = decodedCookie.split(';');\n for(let i = 0; i 0 ? formatFbclid(fbclid) : getCookie('_fbc');\n\n async function sendToFbApi(eventType, data) {\n try {\n await fetch('https:\/\/3whpk5eyn5.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/prod\/fb-conversion-api', {\n method: \"POST\",\n mode: 'no-cors',\n headers: {\n 'Content-Type': 'application\/json'\n },\n body: JSON.stringify({\n eventType,\n eventData: {\n ...data,\n ...(fbc && { fbc }),\n ...(fbp && { fbp })\n }\n })\n });\n } catch (error) {\n console.error(\"Failed to send Facebook event\");\n }\n }\n\n tp = window.tp|| [];\n tp.push([\"addHandler\", \"registrationSuccess\", function(data){\n fbq('track', 'CompleteRegistration', {content_name: data.event, status: data.registration, value: data.user_token});\n sendToFbApi(\"registrationSuccess\", {content_name: data.event, status: data.registration, value: data.user_token});\n }]);\n\n tp.push([\"addHandler\", \"checkoutComplete\", function(conversion){\n fbq('track', 'Subscribe', {currency: conversion.chargeCurrency, value: conversion.chargeAmount}); \n sendToFbApi(\"checkoutComplete\", {currency: conversion.chargeCurrency, value: conversion.chargeAmount});\n }]);\n\n tp.push([\"addHandler\", \"startCheckout\", function(data){ \n fbq('track', 'InitiateCheckout');\n sendToFbApi(\"startCheckout\");\n }]);\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
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