Would not recommend
After being charged with a fictitious crime by a prosecutor that was unqualified to take the case, I was assigned Doug Gutscher as my union-appointed defense attorney. He refused to even listen to my side of the story until he read the police report,
because he didn’t want to “draw any conclusions”. After I requested that he file a motion to have the case reassigned to an independent prosecutor, Doug refused my request and referred to it as “petty and frivolous”. Considering that Doug’s only recommendation was that I take a plea, I discontinued his representation and hired my own attorney. Not surprisingly, my new attorney had the originally assigned prosecutor recused and the State AG assigned my case to an independent prosecutor…who declined to prosecute the ridiculous charge. It’s unfortunate that POAM collected 10 years’ worth of union dues from me and the best they could provide for my legal representation was Doug Gutscher. His unprofessionalism and lack of communication skills were very disappointing.
