Suspect in court for ignoring attorney

One of the suspects in the home invasion that led to the shooting of a convicted drug dealer in a Springfield apartment last summer expressed his frustration last week with the pace of the legal process but ultimately agreed to continue working with his court-appointed attorney.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150112/NEWS02/701129941

Springfield home invasion suspect Jabbar Chandler, 34, left, agreed to keep working with his court-appointed public defender, attorney Eric Louttit, at the conclusion of a hearing last week. Photo: ERIC FRANCIS PHOTOPublished January 12, 2015 in the Rutland Herald Suspect in court for ignoring attorney By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — One of the suspects in the home invasion that led to the shooting of a convicted drug dealer in a Springfield apartment last summer expressed his frustration last week with the pace of the legal process but ultimately agreed to continue working with his court-appointed attorney. Jabbar Chandler, 34, has been held without bail since June when he pleaded innocent to felony charges of unlawful trespass and aggravated assault in connection with a pair of incidents, one of which involved a teenager getting shot in the abdomen allegedly by Chandler’s friend Leon Jiggetts, who is also incarcerated and awaiting trial. On Wednesday afternoon, Chandler was brought into a courtroom in White River Junction to explain to Judge Karen Carroll why he’d reportedly hung up on his court-appointed public defender, attorney Eric Louttit, when Louttit called Chandler at the jail to work on his case. “You really don’t have any authority to fire an attorney who the court appoints to represent you, but what are your feelings on this?” Carroll asked Chandler at the beginning of the hearing as Chandler stood in handcuffs beside Louttit at the defense table. “I asked my caseworker at the jail to call him on more than five occasions, to reach out to him about matters concerning my case, and never got replies back, never got a response back,” Chandler explained, adding, “He did tell me he was a busy attorney.” “Was (last Tuesday) the first time you had ever spoken to him on the phone?” Carroll wondered. “Besides the initial time when he told me he was my attorney, yes,” Chandler replied, continuing moments later, “I have actually been held in custody more than seven months and I just want to know what is going on in my case. I don’t even know what happened at the (December) status conference. It didn’t trickle down to me. Personally, it seems important to me to say in my defense that I don’t even know what is going on, because I don’t.” “I can tell you that what is going on is not a lot. At the last status conference all the court did was set deadlines,” the judge reassured Chandler before returning to the question of his ongoing legal representation. “So if your issue was that he was not speaking to you as much as you wanted him to, why would you not speak with him when he called recently wanting to speak with you?” the judge asked. Chandler said he was upset that he had not seen the details of a plea offer from the state, had not seen all of the state’s evidence in his case, and that at least one alleged witness had not yet been deposed. “Your honor, the initial discovery was sent out to Mr. Chandler and although we have received additional discovery it has not gone out to him because it just got to our office,” Louttit explained to the court, adding that he felt much of the issue last week was simply that the two men could not carry out an intelligible conversation on the jail’s attorney-client phone line. “You can’t understand what’s going on at the other end,” Louttit said emphatically. Turning to Chandler, Louttit said good-naturedly, “How many times, Jabbar, did I say ‘I can’t understand what you are saying’? to which Chandler nodded and said, “A lot. It’s a faulty telephone system.” “But you do feel you can go forward working with him?” the judge asked Chandler. “Personally, yes,” he replied, continuing a short time later, “Personally I have no personal problems with Mr. Loutitt. I just want to be aware of what is going on but at the end of the day I feel like I am fighting for my life because these are serious charges against me.” “I totally understand your feelings about that,” Carroll said from the bench, “To sit in jail and not have communication with your lawyer… I understand how frustrating that can be (and) I hear this a lot because these attorneys who we appoint are very busy attorneys, but being busy doesn’t mean they’re not really good attorneys; (in fact) these are really excellent attorneys who the court appoints to represent people, unlike some other states.” Carroll said she was going to keep Louttit and Chandler paired together on his case, noting, “I’m not convinced that the two of you can’t work together. You clearly had an incident which caused Mr. Loutitt to file this motion but you seem like a reasonable person to me and so does he… and I’m convinced you can still work together to get this done whether that is a plea or a trial, either way is fine.” Both Louttit and Windsor County State’s Attorney Michael Kainen agreed to move Chandler’s case toward a jury trial in March that is expected to last three or four days. Although Chandler’s criminal record in Vermont consists of a single misdemeanor conviction from early last year for selling a small number of pills in Bellows Falls, his New Jersey record runs to several pages and includes 13 separate felony convictions for offenses including multiple counts of possession of drugs on school property, burglary, and receiving stolen property. Those previous felony convictions led the state to charge Chandler as a habitual offender under Vermont’s so-called “Four-strikes-and-you’re-out” law which means that if he were to be convicted of any or all of the three felony charges now pending against him he could face enhanced penalties of up to life in prison at any future sentencing.