THE DEFENSE
NEVER RESTS
early 1980s and never left. When
he started working there, a first
offense for drunk driving was
settled with a $50 fine. Today,
depending on the circumstances,
the same charge can carry a prison term of up to five years. “Back
in those days the amount of
files you would get was not that
much,” he says. “You weren’t
slammed with cases.”
Flora sits in the defender’s office early on a Friday evening in
April. It’s quiet and dark, and
most everyone is gone for the
weekend. He’s in his early 60s,
with thinning silver hair, and
speaks in quiet, measured tones.
He’s probably the only attorney in
the county to successfully argue
a case before the U.S. Supreme
Court, a death sentence appeal for
a convicted mass murderer suffering from severe mental illness.
For most of his career, Flora
worked exclusively in homicides
and remained uninvolved in the
defender office’s day-to-day operations. But when he took over as
chief defender, he faced immense
pressure to tackle systemic failings in the office that had suddenly grown notorious across the
state. In 2009, Luzerne County
was caught up in one of the largest
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
judicial scandals in Pennsylvania
history, involving the handling of
poor juvenile defendants. Dubbed
“Kids for Cash,” the case featured
the extraordinary allegation that
two sitting Luzerne County judges
took $2.8 million in kickbacks
from the owner of a private juvenile detention facility leased by
the county in exchange for filling
those facilities with young offenders through harsh sentencing. The
ringleader of the scheme is serving 28 years in federal prison.
The public defender’s office
wasn’t implicated in the corruption, but its reputation took a
beating anyway, after it emerged
that more than half of the juveniles prosecuted for delinquency
in the county over the previous
decade appeared in court without legal representation. Parents
told a state panel investigating
the scandal that they were pressured to sign forms waiving their
children’s right to counsel without being told the potential consequences. In court, children as
young as 11 were badgered into
pleading guilty, then hauled away
to detention for months at a time
for petty misdemeanors involving
marijuana possession or fighting.
Analysis showed the county sen-