Contract defender Greg Denue devoted more than 950 hours in the first six months of last year to a few cases that qualified him for a $100-per-hour fee. Photo by Gary Thompson.

Contract attorney Greg Denue has turned his part-time job of defending the poor into big business.

Denue billed the county nearly $400,000 last year, including payments for cases started in previous years.

County records show Denue, who declined repeated interview requests, devoted more than 950 hours in the first six months of last year to a small group of cases that qualified him for a $100-per-hour fee.

Some other contract cases during this time -- none of them paid hourly -- got far less attention from Denue than they probably deserved.

A significant chunk of Denue's time on hourly cases was spent on a kidnapping case and a drug trafficking case that prosecutors realized early on needed to be amended down to far lesser offenses.

But because both defendants faced possible life in prison, Denue was paid hourly for his services, which included large blocks of "research" time, according to his invoices.

Jason Doss, Denue's client in the drug case, waived his right to a probable cause hearing in Justice Court. Deputy District Attorney Victoria Villegas, the prosecutor in the case, said evidence against Doss was so weak that charges could have been dismissed at the hearing.

In all, Denue worked 141 hours on Doss' case, according to his invoice signed by District Judge Stewart Bell.

Doss and the defendant in the kidnapping case eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges and avoided any prison time.

But some accused criminals Denue represented as part of his contract duties that paid $3,000 a month, or less than a third of what he earned from his February work on the two hourly paid cases, fared less well.

Jose R. Nunez is a prime example.

Court records show Denue was appointed to Nunez's case on Feb. 17, 2006, by Justice of the Peace Robert Walsh. Later that morning, Nunez waived his right to a probable cause hearing and agreed to plead guilty.

A transcript of the hearing shows that Denue and other defense attorneys in the courtroom were unsure whom they represented.

Paul Wommer, a contract defender assigned to the same courtroom as Denue, told Walsh, "I thought I was getting Nunez, not Alvarez. But I got Mr. Soriano ..."

Denue ended up as Nunez's attorney, after telling the court he had already worked out a deal with Nunez. The latter pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon for threatening to stab his girlfriend with a screwdriver. He is serving six years in prison.

Deputy Public Defender Ron Paulson, who represented Nunez before finding out his office had once defended the victim in the case, said he was surprised by Nunez's guilty plea.

Paulson said no offers were on the table before the preliminary hearing where Denue met Nunez.

"Generally speaking, you could go to trial on that case and lose and end up with the same type of sentence," Paulson said.

The Nunez case was one of several in a recent one-year period that Denue negotiated shortly after meeting a defendant for the first time.

Justice of the Peace Nancy Oesterle, one of the judges who supervises Denue, defended him and the other contract attorneys she helped hire.

In an interview with the newspaper, Oesterle relayed information she said she got from Denue, including that he was proud of his work on contract cases that did not pay hourly.

Among his contract work last year was a full acquittal at trial for Ray Johnson, who had been implicated in a high-profile Easter weekend crime spree, court records show.

Denue has been involved in other cases in the public eye. He is defending bodybuilder Kelly Ryan against murder charges and previously represented a man who sued two companies owned by members of Brunei's royal family.

"They are really good attorneys," Oesterle said of her contract defenders. "My guys are willing to do things they don't even get paid for. ... It's easy to second-guess somebody else."

As in previous years, Denue, Wommer, and a third attorney on the track overseen by Oesterle and former District Court Judge John McGroarty, who retired last year, were near the top of the list of contract defenders who billed for the highest amounts.

Since 2001, four of Denue's invoices have been flagged for possible discrepancies by a county review committee, including one that was reduced by $11,000.

Denue's monthly reports about his contract work last year make it nearly impossible for court administrators to know what he was doing on these cases.

His report from February 2006, when he was busy working on the drug and kidnapping cases, is rife with inaccuracies.

According to the document, Denue said he had 426 felony and misdemeanor contract cases pending at the time, a staggering number compared to the monthly reports submitted by fellow contract defenders.

In February 2006, Denue said he worked on only 17 of those cases. Of that group, three had case numbers that do not exist and four were cases handled by other attorneys, according to court records. In another two cases, he listed doing the same work twice.

Denue listed having done no work at all on the Nunez case.

Denue reported working a total of 51 hours on his contract cases and 161 hours on his hourly fee cases that month.

Contract defender Robert Langford, who supports changing the contract system so that judges are not directly involved in the hiring process, said problems like these are inevitable in the current system.

"I'm supposed to run my law office and keep track of my hours, and regardless of how many hours I write down, I get paid the same," Langford said. "Where is the normal human being going to cut corners?"

Denue's public comments also raise questions about his feelings towards the people whose interests he is supposed to defend.

In a letter to the Review-Journal in the fall of 2005, Denue reflected on an earlier job he had as a public defender in New Orleans.

He referred to people in the hard-hit Ninth Ward of New Orleans as "an entire class of people hooked to the government welfare check IV." Denue wrote that victims of Hurricane Katrina were "no different when it comes to their mental outlook" than "the plantation slaves who waited for the 'Massa' to feed them and clothe them."

The hurricane victims, Denue continued, suffered no losses because "they really had nothing but their welfare checks to begin with."