In eighth grade, David Crowley set his sights on going to law school and becoming Perry Mason.
Decades later, the career path Crowley envisioned as a youth has worked out — mostly — according to plan.
“I kind of am [TV defense attorney Perry Mason] a little bit, other than he won all his cases at preliminary hearings,” says Crowley, Centre County’s chief public defender since 1989.
While real-life courtroom drama isn’t as simple as it is for TV lawyers, Crowley says he’s “done OK” in a legal career that has included about 100 jury trials and a win in a case he argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on its 300th anniversary in 2022.
Centre County’s Office of the Public Defender, which is funded through the county commissioners, provides free legal representation to indigent people charged with a crime, takes care of children in delinquency and civil dependency cases, does appellate work, and handles parole revocation cases at Rockview and Benner state prisons, among other matters.
In 2024, the office handled nearly 3,000 cases for about 2,000 clients.
Some cases are “open for a couple of hours, some are open for years,” Crowley says.
Appellate work is a key part of Crowley’s own caseload these days. Clients facing a serious charge who spent money to hire a private attorney but lost their case often turn to public defenders in prison.
“If somebody loses a trial in Centre County, we probably didn’t do the trial, but we probably did the appeal,” he says.
While the office has eight attorneys on the books, it was down to four this summer through attrition, Crowley says; he expects to have three reinforcements onboard soon.
Crowley, who earned his law degree from Ohio Northern University in 1983, started in Centre County as an assistant public defender in 1986. He believes he’s the longest-serving active chief county public defender in Pennsylvania.
During that tenure, he’s served as a legal adversary for Centre County district attorneys including Ray Gricar, Michael Madeira, Stacy Parks Miller, and, currently, Bernie Cantorna.
“That’s a pretty wide gulf,” Crowley says.
Changing times
He’s seen plenty of change beyond the DA’s office in that time.
One of the biggest developments was the establishment of specialty treatment courts focusing on such areas as drugs, DUI, behavioral health, and veterans as an alternative to prison for non-violent offenders.
Video evidence has grown in importance with the proliferation of body-worn and dashboard cameras, which can be an asset for defense lawyers but also a major time drain.
“There’s video and audio from everything, and you’re obligated to review everything,” Crowley says.
“Your job, especially as a public defender, is dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s to make sure everything you have to be doing has been done.”
Artificial intelligence can be a time-saver for busy attorneys, but there are limits, Crowley says.
“We’re big on case management using electronic research. The AI capabilities that are coming into that are intriguing,” Crowley says. “Double-edged sword there: dangerous and intriguing. …
“It’s nice to start your creative juices flowing on something, but if you’re depending on that to replace what an attorney does, you’ve got a warped sense of what you do.”
Nearly 40 years into his career in Centre County, Crowley — a natural storyteller who often peppers his remarks with humor — says he’s not looking to vacate his second-floor office in the Courthouse Annex in Bellefonte just yet.
“I have no immediate plans to leave this position of power,” he says. “Plus, I’ve got a corner office right across from the [Bellefonte] Wok.”
Here’s more from our conversation:
What’s meaningful to you about this work?
Crowley: You’re helping people and you don’t have to go out and fight for the work either. In a firm, you’re killing yourself with billable hours. You’re self-promoting all the time. Here, they come to you, they’ve got a problem, you do your best to try to get them out of whatever predicament they’re in.
Sometimes you’re having to represent people accused of some pretty bad stuff. Does everyone understand that or do you sometimes get heat from people in the community about why you’re representing that guy after what he’s accused of doing? And if so, what do you say?
Crowley: [It doesn’t happen] very often. Well, you say, “If you were charged with a crime, wouldn’t you want the person that’s supposed to help you in court to put all the other stuff aside? This is the way the system works; it’s an adversarial process. Somebody has to do it. Wouldn’t you want the person that’s helping you through the worst day of your life totally devoted to your cause? Or do you want him judging you?” And that usually ends it, to the extent it comes up.
I had one guy screaming at me during a preliminary hearing once about, “I hope this happens to your daughter.” … I understand something happened to your daughter and you’re upset about that, but the system doesn’t work if you’re standing here and saying nobody can represent him. [That’s like moving] to Russia. It’s not the way we’re supposed to do things here.
Do you sometimes have to put your personal feelings about a defendant aside?
Crowley: It’s not my job to judge anybody. And that helps you through it. … It’s somebody else’s job to judge the worst five minutes of a defendant’s life; it’s not the person paid to help him through it.
Does Centre County give you any unique challenges as a public defender?
Crowley: Here, you’ve got a wide variety of stuff you can come in contact with. And the state prisons help on that too … because of the transient nature of the population coming through the court system. So, you might have a serial killer from Philadelphia that you’re representing him on possessing K2 at Rockview. It’s something different. It’s not what you would see in a more rural county; I practiced in Clarion for a couple years before I started here. And pretty much there, there was some college traffic with Clarion University, but it’s nothing like here. But for the most part, the cases we were doing there, it kind of filled a formula. It was pretty much a vanilla-type practice where you’re representing the same type of people for the same type of things most of the time.
Here, it’s a rainbow world. You see something new every day; it keeps you from getting bored. This is maybe why I’ve been able to do it for almost 40 years.
Are there certain cases that stick with you more than others?
Crowley: In some cases, you think the client got a raw deal and you carry that with you a long time. … But that’s not good for your mental health to carry it too long.
Later in the interview, Crowley adds:
Somebody [asks] you, “How can you represent a guilty person?” Guilty people are easy. … You’re protecting his rights and you’re not letting people shortcut things. … You lose sleep, you throw up, thinking about some innocent person going to jail.”
What are you most proud of in your career here?
Crowley: I’m most proud of the fact that a lot of lawyers have come through here. We typically hire fresh out of law school or close to it. And the people I’ve helped in their careers, I think is one I’m most proud of — even the ones that went on to become DAs. It’s probably 40 or 50 people at least that have come through here. Judge [Casey] McClain in State College. Judge [Bradley] Lunsford, formerly of the Common Pleas Court, started here. I’m mostly proud of the careers I’ve helped. Everybody says it’s a great place for a first job.
Do you see yourself as something of a mentor for younger lawyers in your office?
Crowley: Yeah, I guess that’s a fair description. It’s a nurturing job because as an assistant PD, you get beat down by so many other people. And that’s why people tend not to last here too long. Client management is tough because you’re giving somebody something for nothing and there’s an inherent distrust in that, in the populace. “Oh, I need a real lawyer.” I mean, it’s your right to hire somebody if you want, but until somebody enters their appearance, we’re your attorney. We’ll help you out as much as we can. We’re not miracle workers, but we can at least explain things to you and explain your options and you decide where you want to go with it.
What would you like people to know about this office that maybe they don’t understand?
Crowley: We care and we’re there to try to help people as much as we can. We can’t always do what they want, but we do care about them, their case. T&G
Mark Brackenbury is a former editor of Town&Gown.
