Carla Barrett

Carla Barrett has spent the past 19 years working for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, Massachusetts' public defenders. She told Law360 the job comes with challenges both structural and legal, adding that even among her prosecutorial counterparts, her work can often be misunderstood.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me about your role with CPCS?

My particular title is Attorney in Charge, which means that I am basically the head of the office in downtown Boston. In Massachusetts, all indigent criminal defendants are represented by attorneys under the umbrella of CPCS. About 80% of the representation is handled by private attorneys who contract out with the state — we refer to them as bar advocates. The other 20% are represented by staff public defenders.

I started as a staff attorney in Brockton, Massachusetts. Then I worked with the Roxbury defenders unit, representing people accused of major felonies. In the fall of 2020, I became head of the Boston office. I have my own clients, my own cases, and I go to court for that. But my time is divided between that and supervisory duties.

What are some of the biggest challenges in being a public defender?

There are so many. From a structural basis, we are always struggling with manageable caseloads and adequate pay to retain people to do the work. Separate and apart from that, our clients are very vulnerable people who, by and large, have faced an awful lot of struggles in their lives.

Working with them is incredibly rewarding, but it can also take an emotional toll. We are constantly working with people who have been dealt a really hard hand, faced structural racism, poverty, mental illness, substance abuse disorder, all of these issues. So doing our best to help people who are in these difficult circumstances can create a little bit of a burnout effect. That's something public defenders always have to face and struggle with.

There are some things about being in court that can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes court can be hostile, not only to our clients, but to the attorneys as well. Sometimes hostility is [directed toward] the attorney because the attorney and the defendant are taken as one and the same.

We are up against prosecutors, judges, probation officers, and they all have their own jobs and their own objectives, and their objectives are different from our objectives. It can feel like we see the world differently.

Are there any shifts in case law that you are watching?

One case that came down a few years ago from the state Supreme Judicial Court is Commonwealth v. Long, which impacted the way a defendant can bring a motion to suppress, which usually focuses on the Fourth Amendment and the corresponding Massachusetts law.

The case expanded the ability to make a complaint that a search or seizure violated the equal protection clause, and the case law that has come since has been shifting. It started with traffic stops, but that's been expanded to encounters between police and individuals on the street. When you're making an equal protection claim that a police interaction was based on race, that often requires looking at whether this officer has a history of disproportionate enforcement of the law against a protected class. That area of law is definitely changing.

Another area is laws around digital surveillance. There are a lot more tools available to law enforcement, and courts are looking at what kind of warrant is necessary for a pole camera that monitors someone for a long period of time. Is a warrant necessary?

Is there anything you think prosecutors and other attorneys do not fully understand about public defense work?

There is sometimes a difference between what is in a defendant's best interests and what is in a defendant's stated interest, and our job is to represent our client's stated interest. If my client tells me they don't want to plead guilty, even if they know the consequences of not trying to negotiate a resolution could be detrimental to them, that is their choice.

I can't say to my client, 'You have to plead guilty.' I think that sometimes public defenders get the impression that prosecutors forget that, and sometimes we feel like our client's decisions are held against us personally.

The client is in charge. It's a privilege to represent them, and we certainly love the ability to get to court and to work with the folks we are asked to work with, but our clients do have some agency. My job, as their attorney, is to advise them, not to make decisions for them.

--Editing by Philip Shea.