Salina Regional Office Turns 50: Deputy Defender Pam Sullivan Reflects On the Anniversary and a Career In Public Defense

by Caroline Zuschek, Deputy Capital Appellate Defender

According to dusty old paper records and digitized fiscal reports of the 2000s, the Salina Regional Public Defender Office received funding in fiscal year 1972, and opened officially in 1973. This means it has been serving Salina for 50 years.

At the office's founding, one attorney handled all felonies requiring appointed counsel in Saline and Ottawa counties, as well as all of the appeals from that geographic region. In 1986, a second attorney was added to the staff, and in 1988, the office combined with the office in Junction City to become the North Central Regional Public Defender Office. The combined offices handled felony criminal cases from Riley, Geary, Cloud, Dickinson, Saline, Ottawa, Lincoln, Mitchell, Jewell, and Washington Counties – from Salina all of the way to the Nebraska border. The furthest West office at that time, the regional office additionally handled high-level felonies as far West as Hays and handled high-level felonies in neighboring jurisdictions that included Ellsworth and McPherson counties. A third attorney was added to staff in 1990, and in 1997, the Salina Regional Public Defender Office was again separated from the Junction City Office.

Pamela Sullivan, current deputy to Chief Justin Bravi, started working at the Salina office in 1996. She'd been hired by Mark Dinkel, who began working at the office in the mid-1980s, as the office's fourth attorney (following Ralph DeZago, Julie McKenna, and George Robertson). In the 50 years it has provided indigent defense, Salina has had only five chiefs.

The longest-tenured employee of the office, Pamela tells me she's seen significant changes in the office since she started in Salina over 25 years ago. She said the best and most important change occurred when director Heather Cessna helped secure the Salina office's new office space. "The prior office space was a dump. Infested with bugs and bats."

She told of one remarkable time when former Chief, Mark Dinkel, was at court and a bat began to crawl out of his jacket. She laughs, "The prosecutor jumped across the table to get away from it. And, of course, Mark didn't want to kill the bat, so court was delayed while everyone tried to humanely trap the bat and get it outside." Pam wasn't there that day, but the story is passed down and retold as office lore.

Because of poor working conditions in Salina, those who stuck around were really in public defense for the right reasons – because they believed wholeheartedly in the mission. This is definitely true of Pamela, who plans to retire in August following a near 30-year career with BIDS, primarily in the Salina office. Pamela says her favorite thing about being a public defender and about working in Salina is that she loves helping people. "Everyone is entitled to a strong, competent, defense, and our clients deserve the same quality of resources paying clients can afford." Moreover, since Heather Cessna took over as director, she says the office is better able to fulfill the roles they have endeavored to take on. "Now," she explains, "we can get great experts to counter the State's experts and this has gone a long way in leveling the playing field for the people we represent."

I asked Pam if she remembered any significant cases that came out of Salina. She recalled a triple-homicide case, the prosecution of Alan White. The Salina Regional Office didn't handle the White case, she said, it was handled by the Death Penalty Defense Unit, who was ultimately able to secure a life-sentence plea deal on the eve of trial. She said that even though her office didn't handle the case, the way the DPDU handled it breathed new fire into practice in Salina – “the high level of the motion practice, the zealous defense – it renewed my drive to provide the best defense that I could provide. It got me excited about practicing criminal law."

Pamela said working beside Mark was similarly inspirational – he was good at looking outside of the box to find ways to help his clients. She recalled one case, in particular, that of Clay Snyder. Mark filed an original action in the Kansas Supreme Court arguing that lengthy pretrial delays violated his client's due process rights where the delays were caused by incurable incompetency to stand trial. Although the Court declined to find a due process violation as applied to Mr. Snyder, it admonished the State that it had only cured the deficiency after Mark had filed the action, and took the "opportunity to voice [its] grave concern that the State ha[d] not given this case the careful attention it deserve[d]."

Pam said she is grateful to have spent her career helping individuals in Salina, and feels lucky to have worked in a helping profession in a community that was also great for families. She said practice in Salina has changed in many good ways over her career and its tenure. She is proud of the pay raises implemented last fiscal year – which felt like official recognition of the important work public defenders do – and of the increased access to quality training, which was absent in Salina, and is now offered by the agency online.

She is also happy to see the improved relationship with the prosecutor's office over the last decade. She said that when she first started practicing in Salina, the attorneys were constantly in trial because fair plea offers were nonexistent. Because she covered jurisdictions outside of Salina, she could see the disparate impact geography and prosecutorial discretion had on the lives of her clients. Now, she says, the prosecutors deal (for the most part) more fairly, and a lot of the newer judges were once attorneys in the courtrooms they now preside over.

When I asked Pamela what changes she hoped to see in Salina over the next decade she said: more drug courts, a mental health court, and a prohibition on prison time for individuals accused of simple possession. Pamela said these issues are key to continued reform because, even though Salina presently has a drug court, individuals who complete it are still left with a felony on their record, which frustrates their ability to succeed after completing the program. She'd like to see the program modified to require initial offers of diversion so that individuals who successfully complete drug court can graduate without a felony record.

 She said mental health court seems more necessary than it ever has before. Pamela estimates that over half of her clients have significant mental health challenges, which aren't adequately addressed by the criminal legal system, often prevent compliance with strict probation and parole terms, and lead to recurring criminal convictions. Finally, Pamela says that simple possession crimes are among the most common case types in Salina. She says she feels physically ill when she has a client facing a significant prison time because of an addiction, which of course, is an illness that prison doesn't treat. She would love for our system to help individuals suffering from addiction, rather than waste resources on incarcerating them. "Overall, though," Pamela told me, "I loved being a public defender in Salina, and I am glad to be leaving the career seeing so many positive changes."