Mac Carder Jr., the new chief public defender of the Little Rock-based public defender's office, is an old hand with 29 years as a public defender, 21 of them working in the capital city.
The office serves the 6th Judicial District of Perry and Pulaski counties, providing lawyers for clients who are in trouble with the law but can't afford legal representation. That can be as many as 90% of all defendants in the area, Carder said.
The new chief public defender said he always wanted to be a defense attorney despite receiving a front-row seat to Arkansas politics from his namesake father, who passed away in 2017.
Mac John Carder Sr. was administrator of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Administration from 1979 by appointment of then-Gov. Bill Clinton and then Clinton successor Frank White before taking over the leadership of the trade group Wholesale Beer Distributors Association of Arkansas in 1981 for 26 years.
Rather than following in his father's footsteps, Carder said a passion for standing up for the underdog, particularly the wrongfully accused, led him to the practice of law, always with the goal of working in criminal defense, he said.
"Knowing how it can appear the deck is stacked against you ... I wanted to help them," Carder said. "This is what I've always wanted to do, help people. It's because they're on an unequal footing going into it and throughout the entire process."
A father of two married to another public defender, Brandy Turner, Carder spent eight years in a special unit of the statewide public defender program representing capital murder defendants all over Arkansas facing the death penalty, before transferring back to the Little Rock office in 2002.
Carder said he chose a career as a public defender because working for the agency allowed him to focus on serving his clients while not having to be worried by the business aspects of running a law firm, like having to collect money from them.
"I am not a businessman," he said. "Running a law firm ... to me that would take away from being purely able to concentrate on defending people."
The public should view public defenders as the first line of defense against wrongful convictions, which are now regularly in the news, Carder said.
"There's been a lot of injustices. What we do is vital to the system running properly and fairly," he said. "We are the gatekeepers against wrongful convictions. Everyone should have an interest in seeing that [justice] is done correctly."
Chosen by the circuit's 17 judges, as required by Arkansas Code 16-87-303, Carder was selected out of five candidates to succeed Bill Simpson, who retired after 42 years as the chief defender. He said he only applied at the last minute after other lawyers, fellow defenders and some prosecutors urged him to seek the post, which pays $124,000 a year.
"It took a lot of thought and I struggled with the decision for quite awhile. I thought because of my experience and having practiced within all of the [criminal] courts in the 6th District ... I could do some good."
Carder, 63, said Simpson hired him early in his career after watching Carder diffuse a potential confrontation with a judge trying to bait Carder into an argument.
"Bill was an ideal boss who never intruded into a lawyer's handling of a case because he assumed that lawyer knew, or should know, more about the case than anyone else," Carder said. "I respected the autonomy he gave me and through his example I learned to maintain a professional and courteous manner with judges and prosecutors but to never compromise in asserting a zealous defense of our clients, no matter how unpopular their cause may be."
Carder said his top priority as chief public defender is preserving the high standards set by Simpson while working to overcome the vast backlog of cases left over from the covid pandemic court shutdown of 2020-21.
"[Clients] can expect to be represented by someone who is an expert in the field of criminal defense," he said. I would put some of the lawyers in our office at the top as some of the best trial attorneys in the state. They [clients] can expect zealous representation."
Each lawyer can now expect to handle as as many as 400 cases at a time, four times what had been considered a high caseload before the pandemic, he said. The office has 33 full- and part-time attorneys, with openings for seven full-time lawyers.
The addition of another nine attorneys specially funded to help handle the excess has been helpful, but there's still a lot of work to be done before the office can get back to pre-coronavirus levels, Carder said.
"We are in dire need ... because of the excessive caseloads," Carder said, describing how the stress alone has driven lawyers who intended to commit to a career in public defense out of the field. "It's overwhelming for any attorney. It's beyond what any lawyer should have to do.
"Whatever was considered a high caseload before the pandemic, it doesn't hold a candle to what we've got now," he said.