The Connecticut Public Defender Service has appointed career lawyer John Day as its next chief.
At a meeting Tuesday, the Public Defender Services Commission named Day to replace former Chief TaShun Bowden-Lewis, whose divisive term as the first Black woman to hold the office ended with her dismissal nearly two years ago.
Day has been serving as the agency’s $250,000 a year chief on an interim basis since Bowden-Lewis’s removal. The commission said in a statement following the appointment Tuesday that Day has agreed to postpone his retirement and stay on for another 18 months.
“The members of the commission appreciate the job that John has done on behalf of the Division of Public Defender Services in an acting capacity for nearly two full years and he has undertaken a number of projects that among other endeavors we want John to have the opportunity to complete,” the commission said in a statement.
“To that end, John has agreed to postpone retirement and serve as chief public defender for an additional 18 months. We are pleased that John has agreed to do so and look forward to working closely and cooperatively with him in the best interest of the division over that 18 month period.”
Day was one of four candidates interviewed for the position Tuesday. The names of the others were not immediately available.
Connecticut’s public defender service, which provides legal services to the state’s indigent, is the nation’s oldest, statewide system, having been founded in 1917. It employs about 400.
Day’s leadership of the division has been subdued compared to Bowden-Lewis’s time in office, which was marked by her repeated allegations of racial discrimination. After being hired as the first Black chief and later fired for what the commission characterized as misconduct and poor judgment, Bowde-Lewis sued commission members in multiple venues.
At one point after her firing in June 2024, Bowden-Lewis sued the commission in four forums: U.S. District Court, Superior Court, the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and the state Freedom of Information Commission.
Only the claim before the Freedom of Information Commission has been resolved. Bowden-Lewis argued that the Public Defender Services Commission violated public meeting laws when it fired her without a public hearing. The Freedom of Information Commission said she was not entitled to a public hearing because she had not asked for one.
The other claims – two based in public proceedings in court and a third before the human rights commission, which operates in secret – are similar, according to people familiar with all three.
In them Bowden-Lewis argues she was not fired for misconduct and poor judgment, as the commission claimed in a public memorandum. Rather, she claims the allegations against her were contrived or “concocted” and she was in effect removed for conduct that had been considered acceptable by her “caucasian” predecessors.
In the months leading to her dismissal, Bowden-Lewis lost support of unionized public defenders, who voted 121 – 9 that they had no confidence in her leadership.
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Not long after, her dispute with the commission escalated when it was discovered that she instructed a junior member of the division’s Information Technology team to search the computer system for commission chairman and for Supreme Court Justice Richard N. Palmer’s email conversations — at a time when the commission was considering disciplining or dismissing her.
The forensic investigation revealed that the junior staffer used a software program to locate and download about a dozen exchanges, some legally privileged, between Palmer and two senior division lawyers.