Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout announces she won't run for reelection

WEST PALM BEACH — Carey Haughwout, Palm Beach County's longtime public defender, announced Tuesday that she will not seek reelection in 2024.

Her decision caps a 24-year career handling some of the county's highest-profile death penalty cases. Dave Aronberg, Palm Beach County's state attorney, has also said he will not seek reelection, paving the way for a new pair to take the reigns at the courthouse.

In a phone call Tuesday, Haughwout said she has no grand dreams of sleeping late or spending hours in her garden — only high hopes for the person who takes her place defending the rights of the accused.

"I'm not tired. I'm not burned out. I'm not counting the days 'til retirement," she said. "I just think there comes a time when new leadership can be a good thing for an office."

Carey Haughwout pursued legal career after seeing flaws in criminal justice system

Haughwout has served as Palm Beach County’s public defender since 2001 and was challenged only once during her six-term tenure.

Her passion for criminal defense began at New College in Sarasota, after a stranger climbed through a window and raped her at knifepoint. In a 1994 interview with The Palm Beach Post, Haughwout said she remembered sitting in her apartment while nearly a dozen police officers — none of them women — plodded about. She worried they were destroying the crime scene.

She told reporters later that her skepticism turned to anger when police tried to pressure her into picking someone out of a lineup, even after she repeatedly stressed that none of them resembled her attacker. This, she thought, was how people went to prison for crimes they didn't commit.

Her attacker was never caught. She decided to become a lawyer.

After graduating from New College with degrees in sociology and economics, Haughwout went to law school at Florida State University and finished at the top of her class. She worked as an assistant public defender in Tallahassee before moving with her husband, John Tierney, to Palm Beach County.

The Palm Beach County Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers — once considered a men's club that met at a local singles' nightclub — elected her president in 1991. She promptly moved the group's meeting place to a Mexican restaurant.

Women attorneys weren't rare, she said, but the profession was dominated by men. She felt it during her first job at a private law firm, when a colleague worried aloud that no one would hire them if they knew there was a woman on the team.

She felt it later when a judge told her in a room full of men that a woman's place was in the bedroom and the kitchen. Not the courtroom.

"Everybody just laughed," she said Tuesday.

The prevailing idea then was that women needed to mimic the "male prototype of a lawyer" if they wanted to be effective attorneys, Haughwout said. She refused.

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Haughwout's chief assistant, Dan Eisinger, to run for office

Haughwout climbed the ranks as an assistant public defender in Palm Beach County before defeating former Public Defender Richard Jorandby in the 2000 election.

She had earned a reputation as one of the region’s best defense attorneys by then, but the campaign against her former boss divided the office. High turnover marked her first year at the helm, so she promoted the scrappy young assistants who stayed and took the lead in celebrating every acquittal in the office.

She implemented a countywide re-entry taskforce to help keep people out of prison and honed her skill representing defendants in capital cases. Assistant public defenders and private defense attorneys alike still pack the courtroom gallery when she delivers an opening statement or closing argument.

"She will smile at a witness and just eviscerate them," said defense attorney Donnie Murrell Jr. "And the wild thing is, they will smile back at her while she does it."

Haughwout's chief assistant, Dan Eisinger, has filed to run for the office in her stead. If elected, he will oversee the estimated 120 attorneys and 80 support staff working there. The office is responsible for more than 50,000 cases per year and has a budget of about $18.3 million, according to its website.

"He is perfect for the position," Haughwout said. "He is knowledgeable, he is level-headed, he is kind, and really a very capable lawyer as well as administrator. I am 100% behind him."

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Carey Haughwout, longtime public defender, won't seek reelection in 2024