Chief Assistant District Public Defender Karla Gothard said people frequently ask her how she is able to defend “those people.” She told the Civitan Club that “behind each headline or label, there is a human being with a story. When I look across the table at a client, I see a spark of God in them. I want to know who they are.”
In 1989 the public defender's office was opened, said Ms. Gothard. Prior to the opening, an “indigent person was unable to afford a competent lawyer.”
She said many people have “an attitude” about public defenders and those they represent, until someone in their family is in need of a lawyer and they realize how expensive it is to hire a lawyer.
Ms. Gothard said she believes that her responsibility is to show the jury the story of her client. Especially when a client is convicted of murder, the jury “decides their fate based on the one horrible thing the person has done. As a defender I tell the jury that it is like they are looking at a window with a shade pulled over it. A hole is poked in the shade and what they see through the whole is all they see of a whole life. My job is to lift the window shade up, so they can better see the client’s story.”
She used the trial of her client Isaac Jones as a recent example. “There was a beautiful and dedicated police officer, Julie Jacks, and my client killed her." She said her death is certainly tragic, but there is a “story that goes beyond those headlines. The story of a kind, polite, soft-spoken, intelligent young man with a severe mental illness.” She said Jones was unaware of his condition, but she discovered that members of his family had schizophrenia. She said previous to the crime, Jones’ family never discussed the illness.
She estimated that 95 percent of her clients have problems with drugs, alcohol or mental illnesses. “Those things won’t go away until people step up and deal with it.” She said, “We don’t have effective drug and alcohol programs in our prisons because they cost too much. But it costs too much not to have them because clients end up returning to prison. We do nothing to stop these cycles.”
She said clients "come in nearly every day with tears in their eyes and say, ‘Ms. Gothard will you please get me help?’ and I have to tell them, ‘probably not.’” She said more needs to be done to rehabilitate people with drug and alcohol addictions.
Ms. Gothard said she keeps in touch with many of her clients. “Many of them send me letters and Christmas cards.”
“It’s a good thing for me to stop periodically and step back and ask why I do what I do. I encourage ya’ll to think about that. Then I think what should I do that I’m not doing?” she said.
Ms. Gothard is a native of Chattanooga. She graduated from Brainerd High School and then attended MTSU. Later she graduated from Cumberland Law School in Birmingham, Ala. She has practiced law since 1981.