FOR THE DEFENSE: Jeremy Teipen steps into role as county’s first chief public defender

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Jeremy Teipen is the new leader of the county’s public defender’s office.

Tom Russo | Daily Reporter

GREENFIELD — In Jeremy Teipen’s long career in the Marion County prosecutor’s office, plenty of cases stand out. Some are the death penalty cases, like that of Kenneth Rackemann, who was convicted of killing four people and took a plea deal to get life in prison. Others are cases in which he’s certain the jury reached the wrong verdict.

One case that shaped his approach to criminal justice involved a residential robbery. Two men had broken into a woman’s house and tied her up as they robbed her. Police had only identified one suspect, who the woman picked out of a photo lineup as one of the men who had broken into her home.

As the case moved toward trial, the woman who was robbed attended a pre-trial conference.

“She stopped, and she said, ‘I don’t think that’s the right guy,’” Teipen recalled.

The victim remembered that the man who had robbed her, the one she’d thought was sitting in front of her, had distinctive tattoos. The defendant, however, didn’t have tattoos.

Teipen knew two robbers had been involved, and he asked the victim whether she was sure this wasn’t the other man, but she was adamant that the defendant hadn’t been involved, that her initial identification was wrong.

Teipen went back to the office and phoned the man’s attorney. They went to see him in jail and verified that he had no tattoos on his arms.

“I went back and dismissed the case,” Teipen said. “To this day, I still think, maybe this guy did it. But it’s one of the cases I am proud of, whether he did it or not. I can’t make that case. I shouldn’t make that case. It’s not my job to just get a conviction.”

After spending his career at the Marion County prosecutor’s office, Teipen is switching to the other side of the courtroom to become Hancock County’s first full-time public defender. Teipen said the transition from prosecutor to public defender isn’t as drastic a change as one might think. He said he has many friends and former colleagues who are defense attorneys.

“We both have justice as a goal,” he said.

As the county’s first full-time public defender, Teipen will shape the community’s brand-new department. Until now, defendants in Hancock County who couldn’t afford lawyers have been assigned one from a pool of attorneys contracted to take on individual cases.

County officials said that pool was dwindling, and it was also expensive. In fact, they anticipate that the county will be able to save money by staffing the public defender’s office with full-time employees. Now that he’s been hired, Teipen will hire two more attorneys for the office as well as two administrative staff members.

He’s starting the job without a physical office, but he expects to have one soon when a lease is approved by the Hancock County Commissioners.

“It’s been a very rewarding career, being a prosecutor for so long,” Teipen said. “And then this opportunity came up, and I wanted to do something different to kind of expand my skill set, change my skill set up, and still seek justice, just on the other side.”

It was also an opportunity to work closer to home. Teipen and his wife have lived in Greenfield for the past six years, and he said the new job offers an opportunity to become more a part of the community.

Jonathan Albright, the chair of the public defender board that made the hire, said Teipen’s leadership experience stood out among the applicants who were interviewed.

“Jeremy not only had more than the requisite job experience, he had a long history of supervisory and management positions,” Albright said.

Early in his life, Teipen said, he took a career aptitude test administered by a psychologist who told him it was all but inevitable he’d end up becoming an attorney. Teipen decided to major in anthropology in college, but after realizing he didn’t want to spend his life in academia, he opted to go to law school. After graduating, he was searching for a job in law, uninterested in the corporate side of the profession, and found the prosecutor’s office.

Teipen started out in the misdemeanor division of the office, where he worked until 2005. After that, he went on to the major crimes division, and has served in a variety of roles within the office since then.

“I’ve been on every floor except the child support floor,” Teipen said, adding that he worked out of about 13 separate offices in the building.

He also met his wife there, and she still works as a sex crimes prosecutor. Teipen helped raise his two stepchildren, one of whom is now a lawyer as well. He and his wife enjoy fostering dogs and work with rescue dogs who have been abused or neglected.

During his experience as a prosecutor, Teipen worked on hundreds of cases and prosecuted dozens in court. That experience, he said, will be very valuable as a defense attorney and will help him advise clients about how they should handle the charges against them.

“Having spent that many years evaluating a case, I’ll know the value of a case,” he said.

As the public defender’s office gets on its feet, Teipen said he will look to hire experienced criminal attorneys, ideally those who already have connections to Hancock County. He said he’s already received a few resumes. In the meantime, cases will continue being handled on a contract basis.

Teipen said he also wants to get to know more people in Hancock County’s justice system; he already knows Prosecutor Brent Eaton, who worked as a defense attorney in Marion County before becoming prosecutor. He said he hopes to work with other county officials on programs like drug rehabilitation.

Eaton said he’s known Teipen for a while and thinks he is the right type of person to head the new public defender’s office.

“I have immense respect for his ability as an advocate,” he said.

Eaton said he and Teipen will likely disagree as part of their professional duties, but they had already had conversations about how they can come together to help the courts’ workload. He said he’ll look forward to pursuing options for drug rehabilitation and other treatment programs with Teipen.

“Because he does have such a lengthy period of time working as a prosecutor, I think the perspective he’ll bring to the job will be well-rounded and helpful,” he said.

Judge D.J. Davis, who presides in Hancock County Superior Court 1, said he’s also gotten to know Teipen well.

“He’s always come across as a genuine person who was concerned about the community,” Davis said.

Davis said he thinks it will make a difference for Hancock County judges to have one consistent public defender with whom they can work, and that he thinks Teipen will do a good job of representing clients and hiring other attorneys who are up to the job.

Teipen said the role of a public defender is vital in the criminal justice system.

“A lot of these people, they’re voiceless without an attorney to represent them,” he said. “…I want to establish a level of trust. I think that’s what it’s going to come down to, is feeling comfortable leaving their life, so to speak, in somebody else’s hands.”