Finkelstein v. State

In these two consolidated cases, the Public Defender for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit challenges orders appointing him, over objection, to represent a prospective witness in another person’s pending criminal case — in one case, a prosecution for a new offense and violation of probation proceeding; in the other, a post-conviction proceeding — who has been neither charged with a crime nor taken into custody in connection with the pending proceedings. 1 Having been unable to find support for a trial court’s authority to appoint the Public Defender in the specific instances involved in this…