Pat WootenLAFAYETTE, Ga. – A prosecutor argued Thursday that Public Defender David Dunn should not be able to represent Patrick Ray Wooten, a former Walker County court officer accused of murdering his son.
Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney Michael Moeller said every member of the public defender’s office should be disqualified because Dunn’s employee previously represented the victim, Patrick Lance Wooten. Moeller argued Dunn’s action betrays the trust of Lance Wooten, even though he has been dead for almost two years.
“Victims – even dead victims – have statutory and constitutional rights,” Moeller said. ” You can’t use what you learned from representing Lance Wooten to represent the person who killed him.”
Dunn said Moeller’s expectations are impossibly high. As a public defender’s office representing Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties, Dunn and his employees often represent defendants who are later entangled in other cases – as victims or witnesses. If this were grounds for disqualification, he said, “this would be a dagger in the heart of the public defender system.”
To prepare for a court case, Moeller said, one of Dunn’s employees may have taken notes of conversations they had with Lance Wooten. Some of that information may have hurt his reputation. Moeller said it should be confidential, even after Lance Wooten’s death. In theory, he argued, Dunn could use that information to his client’s advantage now.