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Four public defenders flanked Garnett, 47, as he appeared for an evidentiary hearing in Winona County District Court on Friday morning on eight court files. Each attorney — Greg Colby, Kevin Riha, Carol Weissenborn and Bill Wright — is assigned two files.
A fifth attorney, Samuel Jandt, is representing Garnett on two more files that contain four more order-for-protection violations charges and six charges of tampering with a witness. Those files were not discussed at Friday’s hearing but will be June 25.
The state’s public defender’s office is operating on a tight budget that includes a $6.4 million deficit and a hiring freeze. Despite that, the office assigned five attorneys to Garnett’s cases, because the number of charges would be “overwhelming” for just one attorney, Riha said.
Wright told Judge Jeff Thompson the team agreed to consolidate their cases so they can be heard for an evidentiary hearing on the same day but that they would need at least half a day to make their arguments.
Weissenborn said the team also needed time to gather further evidence from the Winona County Attorney’s Office and requested a hearing date
no sooner than July, to which Thompson offered a tongue-in-cheek reply referring to recent scheduling backlogs.
“That’s not going to be a problem,” he said.
Thompson’s court clerk rattled off four dates before all four of Garnett’s attorneys found open dates in their calendars for Aug. 18.
Thompson gave the defense 30 days to make requests for discovery to the Winona County Attorney’s Office and gave the prosecutors 30 days after that to respond to those requests. He still seemed agitated from a failed evidentiary hearing on Thursday when a public defender expressed frustration for not getting evidence in a usable form from the office.
His order Friday would require evidence exchanges be completed by mid-July, ensuring the August hearing would be meaningful.
Garnett is serving more than eight years in prison for attacking his girlfriend and her children with a miniature baseball bat in April 2007.
The 31 charges stem from alleged threatening phone calls he made to the victims of that assault while he was in jail. An order for protection banned contact between the parties.
The Winona County Attorney’s Office had originally charged Garnett last summer with 49 counts of violating the orders for protection, but Judge Margaret Shaw Johnson dismissed them all, saying the office abused its power in trying to leverage Garnett into a plea agreement.
Winona County Attorney Chuck MacLean was defiant and immediately re-filed more than half the charges.
The legal team has yet to come up with a defense strategy, which could include challenging the filing of the chargers or evidence in the case, Riha said.
Contact Kevin Behr at (507) 453-3524 or at kbehr@winonadailynews.com.
