Save for a shag rug embroidered with the scales of justice and an epigram, “Honest Lawyer,” Ed Sheehy's new office is pretty sparse.

Or maybe it just seems that way, since he's all alone in a downtown building that houses Missoula's new ensemble of public defenders, as recast under the 2005 Montana Public Defender Act.

Furnished or not, though, Sheehy's office is flush with ideals, sorted in feng shui harmony, hanging on a wall beside the man's desk. The scales of justice. Honest lawyer.

“There are no guaranteed outcomes in the process of criminal defense,” he said. “But you tell your client that you will do the best you can for them, and then you do it.”

On Saturday, Sheehy officially became Missoula's regional deputy public defender, just one of many new positions created by the system's overhaul.

By law, people accused of crimes who can't afford their own attorney are guaranteed a free one, provided by the government. In Montana, counties have historically handled that duty, much to the chagrin of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union.

Indeed, the countywide system came under fire in 2002 when the ACLU sued the state, arguing that the funding, oversight and quality of free lawyers varied dramatically throughout the state.

Ultimately, the group agreed to put the lawsuit on hold while lawmakers, unwilling to go into battle in the courtroom, spent two years crafting a new indigent defense agency for Montana. The new law, sponsored by state senators Dan McGee and Mike Wheat and signed into law by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, passed by an overwhelming majority.

The result: a statewide public defender system to service the poor. With its headquarters in Butte, the system is managed by a governor-appointed commission, a chief public defender, Randi Hood, and 11 deputies peppered around the state according to region. The act also sinks an additional $2 million per year into the system.

A critic of the old regime, Sheehy is confident the Office of the State Public Defender will provide defendants with lawyers more expediently, keeping attorney caseloads manageable and vigilantly supervising their performance. These changes, he says, will insure that the constitutional rights of defendants in Montana are upheld.

The law also creates standards that the defenders must follow, and is hailed as the only public defender system in the nation that follows the American Bar Association's 10 recommendations for public defenders, said Scott Crichton of the ACLU of Montana.

At the time they filed the legal challenge, the ACLU said Montana's county-based indigent defense programs were poorly funded and administered, making it impossible for attorneys to provide constitutionally adequate representation for their clients.

A 2004 expert report, published by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in response to the lawsuit, fingered Missoula County as being especially forlorn. The report said letters from inmates complaining that weeks or months passed with no contact by a public defender were “not uncommon, particularly in Missoula County.”

The reason all of this matters: “Because there are lives at stake,” Sheehy said. “There are lives in our hands.”

A few of those lives were named in the lawsuit, drawing the controversy away from abstraction and adding faces to the quandary.

One of the faces belongs to Candace Bergman.

On Sept. 12, 2001, Bergman landed in the Missoula County jail on a drug possession charge. A meth addict with two children, Bergman knew she had screwed up and expected to be punished. She was even eager to perhaps find a treatment program and turn her life around.

For weeks she sat in the Missoula County Detention Center, held on $500,000 bail, without hearing from her public defender. Bergman tried calling the office, only to discover that collect calls from the jail weren't accepted at Missoula's office of public defenders - a longtime policy that the new system tosses out the window. Bergman wrote letters, or “kites,” but received no reply from her attorney.

As months fell off the calendar, her frustration mounted. She even lost her mobile home, which was auctioned off without her knowledge or consent.

When she finally met with her court-appointed public defender, who she calls “inexperienced and incompetent,” he said he was leaving the office and that another attorney would be handling her case. Another two months passed before she saw that lawyer.

By that time, Bergman had been contacted by the ACLU and was listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

When she finally went before a judge, after 10 months of waiting, Bergman was sentenced to a Missoula pre-release center for six months.

“I didn't expect to be let off,” she said. “I committed a crime and I expected to be punished. I just didn't expect to be forgotten.”

Horror stories like Bergman's are inexcusable, Sheehy said, and won't be tolerated under the new system. Aside from added resources, certain “standards” are being implemented to insure a more vigilant watch is kept over individual cases, he said.

Annual caseloads have been limited to 150 clients per attorney, allowing defenders to devote more time to defendants. That standard grew out of national reports that, in Missoula County, the average length of time spent on individual felony cases was 3.6 hours in 2000; 4.9 hours in 2001; and 4.2 hours in 2002.

More money allows the Missoula office to add more attorneys, leveling the playing field between public defenders and the Missoula County Attorney's Office.

Under the old system, attorneys in the Missoula County Public Defenders Office shared one investigator, one paralegal and three secretaries. The County Attorney's Office, by contrast, has the resources of the police and sheriff's departments, three paralegals and seven secretaries.

Sheehy's new public defense office will employ 15 attorneys, three of whom will work primarily out of city court, two full-time investigators and three paralegals. That allows Sheehy to assign an attorney, a paralegal, an investigator and a secretary to each felony case.

“So we not only have an attorney, we have a team, which hasn't been the case before,” he said. “It's more difficult to overwhelm a team.”

In the past, defendants in Missoula County often wouldn't see an attorney for several weeks after their appointment. Under the new system, defenders will visit clients at the jail prior to the defendant's first court appearance. This change will give defendants an advantage from the very beginning of the process.

Many defendants need coaching in certain areas of the law, Sheehy said, and whenever possible they'll have that instruction before they see a judge for an initial appearance.

“This is designed to refocus on the client and give them the same resources that are being used against them,” said Brian Smith, Missoula's managing deputy attorney. “This will make it fair.”

One small change that Sheehy says will have an enormous impact on communication between clients and their defenders is a direct phone line from the jail to the new office.

“No way,” Bergman said upon hearing the news. “I think that being allowed to call the office is huge.”

Not that she's eager to learn firsthand whether the new system works smoothly.

Bergman has been clean for three years, works two jobs and hasn't been in any more trouble. But she'll be on parole until 2008 and on supervision until 2011.

“A lot of things can happen between now and then,” she said. “I don't want to be in that system again. I don't even want to try out the new system.”

The reason offenders like Bergman have a right to legal representation grew out of a landmark Supreme Court case in 1963. The decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, established that states have a constitutional obligation to provide indigent defendants with counsel in felony cases.

In 2003, four decades after the case made its promise to the poor, the American Bar Association began examining whether the commitment was being fulfilled. In many instances, according to the report, defendants were getting almost no representation.

“Thousands of persons are processed through America's courts every year either with no lawyer at all or with a lawyer who does not have the time, resources, or in some cases the inclination to provide effective representation,” according to the ABA report. “The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the United States.”

In Missoula, Sheehy said he's seen hundreds of cases mishandled.

“There are people pleading guilty simply to get out of jail,” he said. “And they might not be guilty of whatever they're pleading to.”

Because of this, Sheehy anticipates more trials.

“There's going to be more trials,” he said. “It's just inevitable.”

And while many people believe the transition will be mostly beneficial, there are mixed feelings, too.

Randi Hood, the state's new chief public defender, eliminated the top two positions in all of the county defense offices as part of the new statewide system. In Missoula, that position was filled by Margaret Borg, who has devoted her career to defending the poor in criminal cases.

Borg has been with the Missoula Office of Public Defenders since its inception in 1985.

“I've always been an advocate for the underdog,” Borg said.

Somehow, though, there's no room for Borg under the statewide system.

“That really frosted me,” said Missoula District Judge Doug Harkin, who described the new system as a “hostile corporate takeover.”

“I'm local, and I like local,” Harkin said.

But Harkin also acknowledged that the new system is a “wait-and-see” situation.

“Our concern is that we'll have to get in line,” he said. “Whenever we used to need another lawyer with the county system, we never had to wait. We're just going to have to wait to see how it works.”

Borg said her access to the Missoula County commissioners was invaluable, and that monthly meetings helped keep “an open running dialogue that will be lost with the statewide system,” which critics think is too expansive to maintain control.

But local funding is primarily derived from property taxes, which leads to enormous budget constraints, according to the 2004 expert report.

The report points out that a weakened local economy causes an increase in unemployment and crime.

“The amount available for defender services tends to constrict in inverse proportion to the demand for such services,” the report states.

Hood, a Helena lawyer with 30 years of experience representing poor criminals, said there's a strategic plan to develop better standards of practice.