TaShun Bowden-Lewis’ term as the state’s first Black chief public defender ended Tuesday with her dismissal for misconduct by an oversight board she had accused of racism and with which she was in near continuous confrontation over two years in office.
Meeting at the state Capitol, the Public Defender Services Commission voted unanimously to fire Bowden-Lewis, who has been suspended with pay since February. The commission released a 110-page legal decision detailing grounds for 15 incidents of misconduct, including findings of a forensic computer examination that showed she improperly accessed privileged email correspondence between chairman Richard N. Palmer and the division’s legal counsel.
The decision concludes in part that, considering factors such as Bowden-Lewis’s employment history with the division, and her testimony during a confrontational appearance at an earlier commission meeting, “the commission unanimously concludes that there is just cause for her removal from office as chief, that the appropriate sanction is removal from office and no lesser sanction will suffice.”
CT public defender tells oversight commission division is ‘fractured along racial lines’
“The commission reached this conclusion because it is convinced that despite the gravity of the sanction, it is a necessary consequence of the conduct in which Ms Bowden-Lewis has engaged since her appointment as chief public defender, and her demonstrated inability to change or modify that conduct going forward. Such sanction of removal is required in the best interest of the division,” the decision said.
Bowden-Lewis, who attended the meeting with her lawyer, former Bridgeport mayor Thomas Bucci, declined to discuss her dismissal.
Bucci said she intended to challenge it “in various proceedings going forward.”
“We are not going to sit here and allow Justice Palmer to orchestrate this coup to give himself day- to-day control of the public defender’s office,” Bucci said.
Bucci said he is not exactly sure how he will proceed but among his options would be suing the commission members individually and bringing them before the state commission on human rights and opportunities where Bowden Lewis would accuse them of illegally retaliating against here for raising concerns about racial discrimination.
In its decision, the commission characterized Bowden-Lewis’ appointment as “historic.” And it said members were committed to her success. It noted that attorney Michael Jefferson, who joined the commission after Bowden-Lewis was named chief, called her a “gem” in an interview with the Courant.
“I can think of no one better suited for the position,” Jefferson told the newspaper. “She has a spectacular devotion to justice… her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is most significant in these days and times. She is just a wonderful choice.”
But the commission’s relationship with Bowden-Lewis quickly soured, according to the decision, and she began aggressively challenging its authority
“Unfortunately, however, and to the dismay of the commission members, it soon became apparent that Ms. Bowden-Lewis not only differed sharply with the commission concerning its statutory authority and responsibilities, but she also refused to cooperate with or take direction from the commission.”
At a commission meeting earlier this year, with her job on the line, Bowden-Lewis claimed that she has authority to do everything she has done including accessing division email accounts. And, she has said, the commission had no authority to substitute its judgment for hers concerning the day to day operation of the division.
CT commission suspends state’s chief public defender following email scandal disclosures
Over the last year she has declined several requests to discuss the matter.
Her tenure was characterized by dissension almost from the start, when she accused the former commission that named her the first, Black chief of racism for failing to hire a candidate she recommended as the division’s human resources director. The accusation set the tone for her relationship with successive commissions, and ultimately led to her removal.
The former commission had bypassed Bowden-Lewis’s choice for human resources director, a Black woman who did not meet state personnel requirements, in favor of a white woman with a law degree and prior human resources experience.
According to an outside investigation by a Hartford law firm, Bowden-Lewis then made working conditions for the new human resources director so inhospitable that she resigned within months. Bowden-Lewis appointed her preferred candidate to fill the vacancy in an acting capacity.
Four members of the former commission resigned as a group after the racism accusation, delivered in a formal letter from Bowden-Lewis’s employment lawyer. The letter said Bowden-Lewis was subject to micro-management because of her race.
The current commission was hastily appointed in March 2023 with instructions to restore balance to a constitutionally indispensable agency charged with defending the indigent in court. Senior members of the division’s legal staff immediately took the unusual step of appearing at commission meetings to complain in public about Bowden-Lewis’s management.
More than one speaker complained that those who disagreed with Bowden-Lewis were accused of racism.
Much of the disagreement arose over the direction she wanted to take the agency. At a time when the division was short-staffed by more that two dozen positions and lawyers were handling unusually high caseloads, critics complained Bowden-Lewis was neglecting her core mission and trying to direct money to what she called an outreach program to increase awareness of the public defender service in inner cities.
She wanted to create a public affairs unit and paid to have a new agency logo created to brand caps and other gifts that could be passed out at community gatherings. She also wanted to form a post-incarceration unit that would offer employment assistance, drug counseling and family reunification services to newly released prison inmates.
Friction soon developed between Bowden-Lewis and the current commission, which by law has authority over division spending, hiring and policy. At one point, the commissioners complained when the division was compelled to return millions of dollars that had been unspent to the state budget at a time when there were authorized but unfilled positions for staff lawyers.
At another point, the commission was critical of Bowden-Lewis after she ignored its repeated instructions over a period of several months to authorize a raise for employees that was required by contract.
Bowden-Lewis, at the same time, was complaining in correspondence to commissioners that she controlled the agency and the commission’s role was, in effect, to approve her decisions.
Last year she defied the commission’s position on hiring policy in an all-staff email. Over a year, she had her employment lawyer send three more letters to the commission implying that it was guilty of racism for second guessing her.
The commission had contemplated including an accusation of making unfounded allegations of racial bias as one of the justified grounds for Bowden-Lewis’s dismissal, but failed to include it in the long, legal memo made public Tuesday.
In the memo, the commission denied discriminating or retaliating against Bowden-Lewis for racial reasons. And it asserted it had been the subject of what it considers groundless racial complaints. But it said it was withdrawing the complaint based in part of her broad, free speech rights.
Previously, the commission, which by law has the final word on division hiring, spending and police, publicly reprimanded Bowden-Lewis for defying its instructions. It also commissioned an investigation by the Hartford law firm Shipman & Goodwin that concluded she bullied employees, withheld resources from those she believed were disloyal and implied that disagreement with her instructions is the result of racism.
Unionized public defenders voted 121 to 9 in February that they lack confidence in her leadership.
Her dispute with the oversight commission escalated in February with new allegations that she instructed a junior member of the division’s Information technology team a month earlier to search the computer system for email conversations between division lawyers and Palmer, at a time when the commission was considering disciplining her.
A private company hired by the Division of Public Defender Services issued a report on the email breaches, which was likely to be among the matters considered by the commission as it decides on Bowden-Lewis’s future.
The forensic investigation revealed that the junior staffer used a software program to search the division computer system to locate exchanges involving Palmer. Ultimately, about a dozen exchanges, some legally privileged, between Palmer and two senior division lawyers were downloaded and printed, the lawyers said.
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