There appears to be at least one lucky number in the latest annual report on Mobile County’s indigent defense system, as the six highest-earning criminal defense lawyers to represent Mobile County citizens under the poverty line are all making six-figure salaries.

Two of those six attorneys also rank within the top three highest earners in the state of Alabama.

Collectively, the cost of paying the six highest-earning Mobile County defense attorneys – $1,003,120 – amounts to a little more than a quarter of the total – $3,720,592 – spent on indigent defense by Mobile County, according to the State of Alabama’s Finance Department’s most recent report on indigent defense spending.

The aforementioned defense attorneys listed in order, starting with the highest earning attorney begins with Habib Yazdi who made $267,193, followed by Lee Hale Jr. who collected $217,239, Gregory Hughes who pocketed $160,364, Gregory Reese who received $146,623, John Thompson netted $107,392 and Russell Bergstrom finished off the pack with $104,307.

The second highest earner in the state was Dallas County defense attorney Keith Alston Jr. who earned $258,662.57.

Hale, Yazdi and other Mobile County attorneys have been among some of the highest earners every year since Lagniappe began its investigation into the indigent defense system. The first Lagniappe report examined information from May 1, 2006 to April 30, 2007 when Yazdi was making $174,339, roughly $92,000 less than the current report finds. Hale earned $113,000 upon Lagniappe’s first examination, which represents a $104,239 increase in income when compared to the same period of time.

For the most recent report, Yazdi is listed as trying 523 cases, Hale 209, Hughes seven, Reese 320, Thompson 241 and Bergstrom 207. There were a total of 9,747 cases in Mobile County Oct. from 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2009, according to the report.

Roughly 170 other area defense attorneys split their share of the remaining $2,717,472. The lowest reported earner listed netted $32.04.

Indigent defense attorneys are chosen by both District and Circuit Court Judges and, according to the Code of Alabama, selections are to be made based on the criteria of both need and whom a judge feels can best defend a client with no means to pay legal fees. This system has been put in place in Mobile because of the lack of a public defender’s office, which is also the scenario throughout most of the counties in the state.

Counties with a public defender’s office such as Tuscaloosa County, pull money from the same state indigent defense fund, but pay their legal staffs a salary instead of the hourly system for independent contractors like the top earners in Mobile County. Tuscaloosa County’s overall indigent defense spending in the state’s latest report totals roughly $3.6 million with $786,027 going toward the Tuscaloosa County public defender’s office. The rest was spent on private contractors.

The in-court going rate for an indigent defense attorney who isn’t a part of a public defender’s office in Alabama is $60, and out-of-court fees are set at $40 per hour, according to the Code of Alabama Section 15-12-21. Mobile County also pays indigent defense attorneys up to $25 per hour for overhead, according to David Sawyer, a lawyer with the Alabama Office of Courts.

The expenditures for Mobile County’s indigent defense attorneys grew steadily over the last three annual reports issued by the Alabama Department of Finance. For the period beginning with May 1, 2006 and ending April 30, 2007, total fees in Mobile County ran $2.7 million. For the fiscal year from Oct. 1 2007 – Sept. 30, 2008, that amount jumped to $3.4 million and finally, this most recent report indicates another $300,000 jump.

Other counties across Alabama such as Jefferson County trumped Mobile in terms of budget, but the top earner couldn’t touch Yazdi unless he had a $95,000 pole. Jefferson County’s total expense for indigent defense in the most recent report is listed as $10,466,700. However, with a considerably larger pool of lawyers – about 480 as opposed to just more than 175 – only nine crested the six-figure mark. The highest-earning Jefferson County indigent defense attorney made $171,887, still $95,306 less than Mobile’s aforementioned top breadwinner.

Baldwin County’s top-tier earners – a group of 14 lawyers – made between $40,000 and $50,000. The total monies spent for Baldwin County’s indigent defense system for the period between Oct. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30 2009 amounted to $1,020,556, or just $17,436 less than the top six earning Mobile County indigent defense attorneys.

Yazdi alone made more than the entire indigent defense expenditures of $251,245 reported for Bullock County. The top earner in that county was Paul May, who tried 434 of the 580 total cases in the county and earned $111,744.

Lee Hale Jr. had just finished trying a case when Lagniappe got in contact with him. Upon learning Yazdi had beat him out for the highest salary amongst indigent defense attorney’s he laughingly conceded to Yazdi, but didn’t discount his efforts.

In past Lagniappe investigations it was revealed that a large percentage of Hale’s appointments came largely from presiding Circuit Court Judge Charles Graddick. When asked about the matter and if his appointments still came largely from one source, Hale said he doesn’t believe that to be the case.

“I don’t know how judges choose. I don’t have an answer to that. You’d have to ask the judges how they do their appointments,” Hale said. “Yazdi and I probably get a lot of cases because we’re always there early in the morning every day. I take this stuff very seriously and I litigate my cases because that’s what I enjoy. If a judge calls, boom. I’m there.”

Hale even offered a scenario he’s encountered in the past when his wife became inquisitive as to how he landed so many cases regardless of the judge appointing him.

“My wife asks me the same thing,” Hale said. “I guess you have to be there to see it and understand it.” Attempts to reach Habib Yazdi for this article were unsuccessful.