"I apologize to you and the county for this inadvertence on our part and assure you that I have taken steps in my office to prevent these mistakes from happening again, " Crespo wrote in a letter to Norman White, a disbursement officer at the Metro-Dade Finance Department.

A fourth lawyer, Mayra Trinchet-Martinez, billed 32 1/4 hours on one day twice and 155 hours in one week in 1988. She initially agreed to an interview.

In a brief telephone conversation, Trinchet said she had two associates and two research assistants who helped handle her caseload. She also said three other lawyers, including Arthur Carter and Randy Maultasch, covered for her several times.

But after Trinchet received detailed questions from The Herald, she did not respond to follow-up telephone calls and a letter. Trinchet was paid $196,611.48 last year from court appointments.

Arthur Carter and Arthur Huttoe, two other lawyers who billed more than 24 hours in a single day, did not respond to The Herald's phone calls and certified letters. Carter made $153,540 in 1989 from court appointments.

In four years, Huttoe, a former judge and the leading money-maker, billed more than $1 million in court-appointment fees. Unlike the others, Huttoe openly assigned many of his cases to several other lawyers. The rules did not prohibit him from doing this.

Huttoe was paid $343,035.50 in 1988. It is unknown how he divided the fees with the other attorneys.

A NOBLE IDEA
System not intended to make lawyers rich

The court-appointment system was never intended to make private lawyers rich.

It was set up after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that a poor criminal defendant has a constitutional right to a lawyer.

In response to the so-called Gideon opinion, state governments set up public defender's offices that hired lawyers for indigent clients.

But a problem developed. Exploding crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s forced public defenders to drop cases due to "conflicts" -- a witness in one case is a victim in another, or several co-defendants have competing interests.

The solution: judges appointed private defense lawyers to fill the gap.

It was a noble idea. The lawyers would work at a discounted hourly rate. They viewed it as a form of community service. It also gave indigents the advantage of being represented by more experienced lawyers.

But in Miami, part of the defense bar came to depend on court-appointments as a steady source of income. As early as 1977, lawyers were able to earn nearly $30,000 annually from appointments. By the early 1980s, several attorneys were making more than $100,000 a year in court-appointment fees.

State Attorney Janet Reno noticed in 1985 that the costs were soaring. She saw that Dade County had spent $3.5 million on court-appointed lawyers, more than half of the state total in 1984.

"Something was terribly wrong, " Reno said.

She pushed for reform, but Dade judges, and the private lawyers themselves, vehemently resisted change.

"It's a pocketbook issue, " said Miami defense attorney Edward R. Shohat, then-president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in 1987. "We don't hide from that."

Judges controlled the appointments and the bottom line: they approved the fees with their signatures. "The judges are very reluctant to confront the lawyers, " said Mastos, a former judge.

The buck doesn't stop entirely with the judges. Dade County, required by state law to pay the lawyers' bills, uses three clerks to review bills and question expenses.

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