Can I Fire My Court-Appointed Public Defender?

You don't think your public defender is doing a good job, and you want someone else from the public defender office to represent you. Is it as easy as firing the lawyer and asking for a new one? Not typically.

Defendants sometimes ask judges to fire their appointed counsel—usually a public defender or panel attorney—and appoint a new one. Often, the stated reason is something like, "My attorney and I don't see eye to eye about case strategy," or, "My attorney won't talk to me."

Judges rarely grant such requests, believing that most of them stem from frustration with the system rather than the reason actually stated by the defendant. Most indigent defendants must therefore either accept whatever lawyer the judge appoints or represent themselves if they are qualified to do so. The right to counsel of choice does not extend to defendants who require appointed attorneys (U.S. v. Gonzales-Lopez, U.S. Sup. Ct. 2006).

However, if a defendant can offer concrete proof that communications with a court-appointed lawyer have completely broken down, the defendant may be able to successfully pursue a "Motion for Substitution of Attorney."

Instead of asking a judge to order a change of a court-appointed attorney, a defendant may have better luck asking the attorney to agree to the change. Rather than continue to represent a defendant with whom communications have broken down, court-appointed attorneys tend to honor such a request, and judges tend to go along.