The attorney who was attacked from behind by a jail detainee during a Broward County court hearing is recovering but she says more has to be done about the way people with mental illness are handled within the justice system.
William L. Green, 27, got up from his chair, walked up behind Assistant Public Defender Julie Chase, and landed a blindside left hook to her head on Wednesday. The attack was seen live on camera.
“I felt sharp pain, ringing in my ears, and disorientation,” Chase wrote in a letter to her boss, Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, on Thursday.
She thanked Broward Sheriff’s detention deputies, fellow attorneys, and even the detainees who came to her aid as Green was being subdued and taken away.
“As one might expect a day after taking a hard blow to the head, I’m experiencing a fair amount of discomfort and pain,” she wrote. “At this point, thankfully, it appears the physical consequences of the attack will improve as they should.”
Chase received hospital treatment after the assault.
Green was in court for a previous battery charge stemming from an alleged assault on a medical technician in a mental health ward at Florida Medical Center. He was in treatment for psychoses, investigators said.
After the assault, Green was taken to another mental health facility instead of jail, records show.
In her letter, Chase said people dealing with mental illness can end up in jail sometimes, and that more steps should be taken to keep them safe while also assuring the safety of attorneys, law enforcement, medical professionals and the public.
Since the attack, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony increased security for the Magistrate Court sessions by handcuffing all detainees and rearranging the chairs in the Broward Main Jail’s courtroom to make it more difficult for anyone to approach an attorney or detention deputy from behind.
In Broward’s first-appearance court, recently arrested defendants appear before a judge who sets their bonds and release conditions, rather than hear evidence or try their cases.
The judge is in a small courtroom at the Broward County Courthouse, and the defendants appear by way of remote video hookups from hearing rooms in each of three Broward jails. A public defender frequently stands next to the defendant in the Mail Jail’s hearing room, where Chase was attacked.
wkroustan@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4303 or Twitter @WayneRoustan
Defendants are handcuffed and chairs are rearranged in jail after assault on attorney
Sheriff: Defendants to be handcuffed after public defender punched in the head