One of the leaders of the New Orleans public defender office spent three hours in jail Tuesday after Chief Juvenile Court Judge David Bell found him in contempt because his attorneys were not ready to go forward in Bell's courtroom.

The dispute between the judge and the public defenders was resolved by the end of the day, after Steve Singer was released from Orleans Parish Prison when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal issued a stay of the contempt order. Singer said he and another attorney went from Central Lockup to meet with Bell to brief him on plans to increase the number of lawyers who will represent young people accused of crimes.

"I think (Bell) is frustrated for the right reasons," Singer said. "I think, like a lot of us, for him the pace of recovery is not fast enough. I agree with him."

The public defender office is slated to receive state money soon to hire attorneys specifically to represent juveniles.

Because one of the public defenders assigned to juvenile court is on her honeymoon, there was only one attorney covering cases Tuesday in the four courts that deal with juveniles accused of committing crimes. The working attorney was hamstrung because all four judges were holding court that day, said Derwyn Bunton, a member of the board that governs the Orleans Parish indigent defense program.

Bell said he had warned the public defenders office that if an attorney was not ready for court, he would find someone in contempt. As the trial chief for the office, Singer had indicted to Bell that he should be the person held in contempt if the judge decided to do so. Singer said he spent about three hours at Orleans Parish Prison, as well as another hour and a half at the lockup at juvenile court.

On Tuesday, there were five trials and 19 matters on all of the court dockets, which was far too much for one attorney to cover, Bell said.

Singer, who is essentially volunteering as trial chief and also works at the Loyola Law Clinic, is part of a group of lawyers working to reshape the indigent defense office. Several judges at the Criminal District Court, which deals with adult crimes, have complained that some of the changes, such as requiring all attorneys to work full-time, have yet to improve the quality of representation for indigent defendants.

But Bell said he is solidly behind the changes being made at the public defender office.

"At the end of the day, we will have a public defenders office that is better trained, staffed and manned, in juvenile court at least, than they ever have been in the past," he said. On Tuesday, he felt that the office's leadership needed to be "nudged on course," he said.

Pamela Metzger, another member of the board that oversees the public defenders office, said holding lawyers in contempt is not a positive way to deal with a criminal justice system that is still being repaired. She noted that criminal court judges recently threatened to hold board members in contempt if they did not comply with a judicial order.