Hot mic at Bowden-Lewis hearing: “Let’s keep you on the payroll as long as possible.”

At the conclusion of a four and a half hour termination hearing, suspended Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer was caught on a microphone revealing his strategy and his client’s strategy: delay. Thomas Bucci, counsel for Bowden-Lewis, engaged in an exchange with Public Defender Services Commission Chairman Richard Palmer over date on which the hearing would resume.

”Let’s keep you on the payroll for as long as possible.” Bucci, a former mayor of Bridgeport, was caught saying to Bowden-Lewis. In her state of suspension, Bowden-Lewis continues to be paid. That will end if she is removed from the job she has held for two tumultuous years. Removal appears to be the likeliest outcome as Bowden-Lewis seemed to have no support among the six members of the commission. Throughout the hearing, various members expressed exasperation boarding on astonishment at Bowden-Lewis’s evasive and unresponsive answers to questions. It was a festival of non-sequiturs as Bowden-Lewis often contended that her authority as chief was unlimited. Bowden-Lewis was unable to provide a creditable reason for having a technology staffer provide her with Palmer’s emails to and from the agency’s counsel. She testified that she could not recall reading the messages she’d gone to considerable lengths to obtain.

Palmer, a retired associate justice of the state Supreme Court, offered Bucci the choice of continuing the hearing Tuesday another three and a half hours until 10 p.m. or reconvening at another date—-soon.

Little business was thought to have been moved in the state’s criminal courtrooms as both public defenders and prosecutors watched the final act of Bowden-Lewis’s bewildering tenure at the head of the nation’s oldest public defender public agency.

Published April 16, 2024.