TRENTON – Yvonne Smith Segars, a longtime defense attorney and leader in the national drug court movement, was confirmed unanimously by the New Jersey Senate today to be the next Public Defender for the State of New Jersey.

Ms. Segars, a 13-year veteran of the Public Defender’s Office, was nominated in May by Governor James E. McGreevey while serving as the First Assistant Deputy Public Defender in the agency’s Essex Adult Regional Office.

The Office of the Public Defender, created in 1967 as the first statewide public-defense system in the nation, has 22 regional offices and oversees trial work for indigent adults and juveniles charged with indictable offenses, as well as death penalty litigation. In addition, the Office represents children in abuse and neglect cases (Law Guardian Unit); adults facing termination of parental rights (Parental Representation Unit); people being committed either voluntarily or involuntarily to state psychiatric institutions (Mental Health Guardianship and Advocacy Unit); and registrants under New Jersey’s Megan’s Law statutes (Special Hearings Unit). The Office also handles all criminal appeals and post-conviction relief matters.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week, Ms. Segars told the Senate panel that she viewed the Public Defender’s constitutionally mandated defense work as more of a calling than a vocation. “I don’t consider it a job, I consider it a passion to represent the indigent and disenfranchised,” Ms. Segars, of Bergen County, told the Committee.

Ms. Segars’s first stint with the OPD was from 1985 to 1987 as an Assistant Deputy Public Defender, after having served as a law clerk for Superior Court Judges Rosemary K. Reavey and Martin Kravarik in Middlesex County. From 1987 to 1990, Ms. Segars was with the law firm McManimon and Scotland, serving as bond counsel to municipalities, boards of education, counties and utilities authorities.

She returned to the OPD in 1991 and became the First Assistant Deputy in the Essex Adult Region in 1994. During that time as a senior trial attorney, she was responsible for the management, training and hiring of staff attorneys and outside counsel.

Ms. Segars has lectured nationally on policies relating to criminal justice and drug treatment and is a core faculty member for the Justice Management Institute, the National Drug Court Institute and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Court Programs Office. She also serves as New Jersey’s representative to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals and is a founding member of the state-level body of the organization.

Well known in legal circles for her work advocating drug courts, Ms. Segars was a member of the planning and implementation team for the Essex County Drug Court which opened its doors on May 22, 1997 as one of the first in New Jersey. She has since been a strong proponent of expanding the courts into other jurisdictions to give all non-violent drug offenders the chance to enter the heavily supervised treatment programs aimed at removing the influence of illegal drugs from their lives.

Responding to questions about her work with drug courts, Ms. Segars told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she considered the program “one of the most progressive components of the criminal justice system. I will continue to work with the courts and with all the agencies involved to expand drug courts.”

In May 2001, Ms. Segars received the “Professional Woman of the Year” award from the Essex County Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc. She is a member of the Garden State Bar Association, the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey and the Essex County Bar Association, where she served on the County Bar’s Judicial Appointments Committee from 1997-2002. She was appointed by the Supreme Court to serve on the Bergen County Ethics Committee from 1998-2001.

Ms. Segars earned her law degree from Rutgers School of Law in Newark in 1984 and her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Kean College in 1977.