Two years later, Gelber was elected to a seat on the county bench. Five years later, he resigned from the bench and pleaded guilty to extortion and bribery.

NO CRACKDOWN
Questioning legal bills considered distasteful

Despite all of the warnings, the system was never given a mandate by the top judges to crack down on lawyers who overcharged county taxpayers. Court and county officials found it distasteful to question lawyers about their bills.

The argument: Lawyers are officers of the court, sworn to uphold the law. Their word is their bond. They signed affidavits that their bills were true.

"You have to rely on the honesty of people, on some level, " said former Dade Chief Judge Gerald Wetherington. "There is no way to avoid it."

With no fear of tough enforcement, court-appointed attorneys can run up huge bills by representing defendants charged with multiple cases -- even if they don't go to trial.

The problem with holding court-appointment attorneys accountable boils down to this: At its very worst, a dispute turns into a polite negotiating session before a judge, who usually appointed the attorney in the first place.

One example: Taxi driver Michael Maret went through several court-appointed lawyers before he was finally convicted of first-degree murder.

Three lawyers turned in bills totaling more than $24,000, double the state's recommended limit of $12,000 for a capital case with a five-day trial.

Huttoe took the case just three weeks before it went to trial. He ended up charging the county $7,895. At the five-day trial, Huttoe called no witnesses to testify. His bill contained itemized hours because it exceeded the minimum fee.

Benitez tried to challenge Huttoe's bill at a late 1991 hearing before Circuit Judge Henry Oppenborn Jr.

"To require the county to pay approximately $24,000 for the representation of this defendant is really not proper in the system, " Benitez told the judge. "This has got to stop."

"Is this your only argument?" Judge Oppenborn asked.

Oppenborn ordered the county to pay Huttoe the full amount.

Nobody in the courtroom that day mentioned that Huttoe gave $1,000 to Oppenborn's re-election campaign the year before. That's not unusual in Dade circuit court.

In May 1989, Dade's judges implemented three changes in the system -- all in the name of saving taxpayer dollars:

* Hired 52 attorneys to work with the public defender's office.

* Tightened up on the number of cases that the public defender's office can drop by requiring a supervisor to approve all "conflicts."

* Scrapped the itemized hourly billing and replaced it with a system of standardized minimum fees.

The changes combined to reduce Dade's court-appointment budget by $1.4 million a year.

The switch from itemized billing to form billing, however, was welcomed by lawyers who handle a high volume of court- appointed work and had trouble keeping track of their hours.

'THE PUBLIC TROUGH'
Under new system, still no accountability

Even under the new minimum-fee system, the lawyers are not held accountable. A lawyer can make a lot of money because he makes the same fee whether he puts in six hours or 33 hours.

By merely checking a box on the form bill, court-appointed lawyers can make as much as $240 an hour handling cases, almost five times the rate mandated under state law.

Trinchet, who made as much as $128,000 under the old system, boosted her earnings to $196,000 last year under the form system.

Like many lawyers, Mastos is a staunch supporter of the new form system.

"I think that the greatest thing that could have happened is we went to the fixed fee billing system, " said Mastos, who earned about the same amount -- $130,000 -- under the two systems.

"So to me, I think that also proves that I didn't pad or submit phony bills. My earnings stayed exactly the same."

Mastos, Manuel Crespo and Clinton Pitts -- all lawyers who have earned six-figure annual fees from court appointments -- served on a committee of lawyers that recommended the change from itemized hourly bills to the form system.

Pitts argued that the lawyers were willing to change the system because the public was becoming concerned about the big fees.

"A lot of money has been coming through the public trough, " he said. "The public needs some kind of reprieve. We decided we owe something to the community."