Jennifer Sellitti has been confirmed by the legislature to be New Jersey's next public defender succeeding Joseph Krakora who served in the role since 2011 Sellitti's term will begin on February 1st and will last five years Governor Murphy nominated cidi in November highlighting her 17 years of service working within the public defenders office including in leadership roles there it's a job that doesn't get a whole lot of attention but plays a critical part in New Jersey's Criminal Justice System Jennifer Sellitti sat down with me recently to share her priorities as she prepares to take over this office Jennifer great to have you with us uh congratulations on your confirmation um what is the role of the public defender here in the state of New Jersey thank you so much so the role of the public defender here in the state of New Jersey is to oversee an agency of 1,200 employees 650 of which are attorneys and it is our responsibility to provide counsel to people people throughout the state who cannot afford Counsel on their own and most people when they think of us think of us as criminal defense attorneys and we do certainly represent people in criminal proceedings and that's the largest percentage of our work but we also represent both parents and children in child welfare proceedings and people in mental health courts in recovery courts and in some other smaller sub practice areas throughout the state we know when we look at the criminal justice system that um it can be CAU ly and too often favors those who have wealth what is guaranteed for a person who needs to access some kind of Defense so under our state and our Federal Constitution uh there is a constitutional guarantee of a lawyer when you are charged in a criminal case so our lawyers work in our Superior Courts in the state of New Jersey representing people charged with indictable offenses most people commonly refer to those as felony offenses throughout the state and that can be everything from lower level offenses like drug offenses all the way up to murder cases now in in February you'll be replacing Joe Kora who served as our public defender uh before you you in this role have the opportunity to affect and and um Implement some public policy or I should say recommend public policy what are your priorities so I I should start by clarifying that our role really is to represent clients in courtrooms and in cases so we are representing one client at a time in courtrooms across the state every day however through that representation we obviously do have a lot to say about public policy and I'm hoping that what our role can be is advising the people who make policy be that legislators the governor other advocacy groups and community members throughout the state on how the policies that they are creating affect people who are charged in cases or a litigant in a case on the ground in terms of the world of of uh the criminal legal system some of our priorities are changes in jury selection the expansion of recovery and mental health courts as well as police accountability and some police reform Jennifer how often are you actually testifying in hearings so um not not often but I see our office doing a lot more of that in the future um there are a number of Criminal Justice policies of child welfare policies mental health and Recovery Court policies that are being debated every in the legislature me just this past couple of weeks we've seen many of them um we historically have not had as much of a voice in that um but I see us as advisers to these policy makers and I see us doing more testifying in the future on on issues that matter to our clients thank you so much Jennifer Sellitti best of luck to you on this new role thank you so much thank you for having me [Music]