room floor. They blanket the backseat of the rusty Subaru in the
driveway, which he’s borrowing
from his mom while his own car is
in the shop. In his cramped home
office, law books, legal journals
and other documents cover the
floor and the windowsill, while a
printer on his narrow desk churns
out more pages.
Olexa, 37, is clean-shaven, with
close-cropped wavy brown hair, a
boyish face and a slightly crooked
smile. He would probably seem
younger than his age, if not for the
dark circles under his eyes.
“What am I missing?” he mutters to himself, tossing some folders aside and stuffing others into
an oversized briefcase. “What am
I missing?”
Many public defenders in Luzerne are assigned specific geographic areas, and Olexa covers
Hazleton, a blue-collar city of
25,000 about 40 miles south of
Wilkes-Barre. The city is distinguished by a once-stately and
now badly dilapidated downtown area, built during the region’s coal boom a century ago.
Ed Olexa has
a caseload
of 260, way
over the 150
cases a year
recommended
by the American Bar
Association.