Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — The county public defender’s office has accused a local attorney of refusing to pay nearly $6,000 in legal fees needed for the defense of a mother charged with attempting to kill her kids.
Police on Dec. 10 say they found Melissa Ann Scholl, 32, of Wilkes-Barre, in her car in the Williams Bus Line parking lot on Blackman Street with a hose strung between the car’s exhaust pipe and the passenger area and her two children, ages 5 and 7, in the back seat.
It was evident Scholl needed to be evaluated by forensic psychologists, Chief Public Defender Steven M. Greenwald wrote in a petition filed Friday in Luzerne County Court. As a result, invoices of $4,060 and $1,800 were billed to the public defender’s office, who Scholl originally applied to represent her.
Scholl later indicated she wished to be represented privately by attorney Larry Kansky. Greenwald emailed Kansky afterward and asked what arrangements he had in mind regarding payment for the services.
“In an effort to ensure payment of those invoices, and to properly protect the taxpayer-funded budget of the Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office, and inasmuch as attorney Kansky apparently refuses to approach the court for payment of the outstanding invoices, in spite of the fact he had demanded the work product, petitioner now requests this honorable court to pay the invoices,” Greenwald wrote.
Kansky on Jan. 27 responded to Greenwald’s payment inquiry that Scholl, charged with two counts of attempted homicide, has no money to pay the bills — and he wasn’t willing to pay them, either.
“I suggest the PDs office pay them since you hired these doctors,” the attorney wrote. “The fair thing to do to help Melissa Scholl would be to turn them over to her through me. If not, that would be unfortunate.”
Greenwald replied his focus is to make sure the costs were paid.
“My feeling is that you should have been thinking about hiring experts on your own to present either a defense or mitigation evidence at sentencing should she be convicted,” Greenwald wrote in an email, adding that Kansky had to anticipate he “would need funds to do this and would at some point be requesting permission to do so from the court.”
The petition says Greenwald made multiple attempts to reach Kansky via email, but the attorney didn’t answer for several days.
On Feb. 22, Kansky said he initially responded to Greenwald’s “obnoxious” email on Jan 27., when he asked for the medical records and indicated neither he nor Scholl would pay the public defender’s office for invoices they are “legally obligated to pay.”
“If you lie to the court that I have not addressed this issue, I will be forced to file a complaint with the disciplinary board concerning all your unethical conduct in this case,” Kansky wrote.
Kansky is “delusional” if he believes the public defender’s office would turn over exam results which he refused to approach the court to pay, Greenwald said.
Scholl remains jailed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility on lack of bail.