Charleston attorney will be sworn in next week as new 9th Circuit public defender | News

Local attorney Cameron Blazer was appointed as the next 9th Circuit public defender, a role she’ll assume Aug. 2.

The 46-year-old criminal defense lawyer will replace Ashley Pennington, who is retiring after 14 years in the position. Blazer will manage an office of 40 attorneys who defend impoverished men and women accused of crimes in Berkeley and Charleston counties.

The S.C. Commission of Indigent Defense accepted Blazer’s nomination May 25. She was referred to the state commission by the 9th Circuit Public Defender Selection Panel, a five-member body elected by Charleston and Berkeley counties’ bar associations.

Blazer, who was born and raised in Charleston, is returning to the public sector after spending the better part of the past decade as a private criminal defense attorney.

Blazer didn’t always know she wanted to be a lawyer. She began her career in technology consulting, trading the Lowcountry for the West Coast after graduating in 1997 from the University of South Carolina.

Blazer spent her evenings moonlighting as a line cook in Hollywood kitchens. Positions in both the tech and culinary worlds gave her an intimate glimpse into the immigrant community. Blazer watched her colleagues of varying levels of privilege — undocumented people in kitchens and H-1B visa recipients in tech — “get screwed” by the immigration system, she said.

She moved back to South Carolina and became an academic adviser at her alma mater, helping many undergraduate students choose law school as their next adventure. Cameron McGowan Currie, a federal judge in Columbia and Blazer’s namesake, encouraged her to do the same.

She graduated from the Charleston School of Law in 2007. Blazer had always thought she’d wind up an immigration attorney, but she developed an interest in criminal law. 

Blazer spent one year at a civil law firm before joining the 9th Circuit Public Defender’s Office, where Pennington was its newly elected leader. The role felt like a natural fit, she said.

Pennington remembers the “bright” young attorney as someone “committed to working hard to help her clients.” Blazer came in and did just that, he said.

She spent a year in Pennington’s office before becoming an assistant federal public defender in South Carolina. Blazer held that job until 2013, when her salary was cut in the federal budget.

Blazer, who had a young child at home, decided to enter private practice. She got a job at Savage Law Firm in Charleston as an associate criminal defense lawyer.

There, Blazer represented a slew of clients, including former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager. The White ex-cop pleaded guilty in 2017 to violating the civil rights of Walter Scott, a Black motorist he fatally shot in April 2015 following a traffic stop. 

As a private defender, Blazer found that members of the public would sometimes assume a lawyer endorses their client’s actions. 

“My endorsement is of humanity,” she said. “(The) humanity I have found in every single person I have ever represented.” 

Blazer sees criminal defense as being an important check on the power of a government to take away someone’s freedom. It’s her job to ensure that when a client is convicted of criminal behavior, the consequences aren’t disproportionate, and take into account the totality of the person, she said.

After nearly nine years as a private defense lawyer — time which included opening her own firm — Blazer carefully thought about whether she should apply for Pennington’s job. She asked herself: “Would this be good for me, and would I be good for it?”

The lawyer’s private practice is shutting down as a result of her new position, Blazer said. She will continue representing clients from a few outstanding cases through their completion.

Her heart has always been with public defense, she said. These lawyers play an important role — not only in fighting for a fair outcome in their clients’ cases but also in helping them live happy and successful lives after their case has left the criminal-justice system.

“These are our neighbors, and whether we … see their conduct as reprehensible, regrettable, worthy of punishment — they are not islands,” she said. “They have families, they have jobs, they have children, they have friends, they have communities.”

And the ripple effects of what judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys do to either help them or punish them will ripple in both directions. Blazer doesn’t feel a lot of “moral ambiguity” about her job, she said.

There will be short- and long-term challenges in her new role as public defender, Blazer acknowledged, the most pressing of which is the enormous case backlog threatening courts statewide. The typical criminal case in Charleston County took 592 days — more than a year and a half — to resolve in 2021.

“I’m going to do everything I can to be a thoughtful and creative problem solver,” Blazer said about fixing the backlog problem. Everyone involved needs to be “open and willing to try new things,” she said.

Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said she looks forward to working with Blazer, who “has always been a very thorough and skilled defense attorney.”

The top prosecutor has already met with the incoming defender, and Blazer knows most of the attorneys in Wilson’s office, the solicitor said.

Pennington said he believes his replacement will do a “superb job.” Blazer has met with the outgoing defender several times, as well as senior staff members in both Charleston and Berkeley counties.

“She seems to be very energetic and enthusiastic about taking on this challenge,” Pennington said. “I look forward to watching her success.”

Blazer is most excited about working with a group of people who share the same set of values and organizing principles: “It’s a community,” she said of her fellow public defenders.