HELENA - Anthony St. Dennis was accused of beating a homeless man to death near a Missoula footbridge in 2007. Dustin Strahan was implicated in the crime, too.

Both young men were assigned state-funded public defenders. But Strahan copped a plea with prosecutors and testified against St. Dennis, essentially pitting the two men against each other in court.

Is it right that their lawyers worked for the same office and answered to the same boss?

The Montana Supreme Court took up that question Wednesday in oral arguments in a case that goes to the heart of some of the criticism leveled at the four-year-old Montana Office of the Public Defender.

A 2009 audit of the agency by consultants with American University in Washington, D.C., faulted the agency for failing to address such conflicts of interest. The consultants wrote that lawyers should not represent clients if they have a conflict of interest in the case. Such conflicts are not resolved by transferring the case to another lawyer in the same firm.

That's exactly what the state did with St. Dennis, argued Colin Stephens, a Missoula lawyer hired to take the case to the Supreme Court.

St. Dennis was eventually sentenced to 100 years in prison in the death of Forrest Clayton Salcido and will not be eligible for parole for 40 years. He appealed his conviction, saying because of the fact that his lawyer and Strahan's lawyer worked for the same outfit, they had a conflict of interest in representing clients who opposed each other in court.

There are two co-defendants, Stephens told justices in his argument Wednesday. "One is directly pointing the finger at the other and is represented by an attorney out of the same law firm."

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But Sheri Sprigg, an assistant attorney general representing the state in the case, said St. Dennis' lawyers have never shown that the mere fact that both he and Strahan had public defenders necessarily means St. Dennis' lawyers "had a lack of loyalty to him."

"They haven't cited a single case that is similar to this situation," she told justices.

In her written argument before the court, Sprigg argues that if St. Dennis' logic were to prevail, virtually every public defender in the state would be disqualified from representing a co-defendant in a case just because they work for the public defender office.

In this case, attorneys for Strahan and St. Dennis were not in the same location; the men were assigned attorneys from different offices precisely to avoid a conflict.

Sprigg said the state rejects the argument that every public defender is essentially a member of the same "law firm."

But Stephens argues that such a move wasn't good enough. Ed Sheehy Jr., the regional public defender in Hamilton, testified in court that he personally appointed lawyers for both men. Sheehy later wrote a letter to one of the attorneys in the case complaining that the way she was handling parts of the case threatened to make the entire public defender system "look bad."

That letter, combined with the American University audit, shows the system is really "one law firm influenced strongly by loyalties to that firm and its appearance to the outside world," wrote lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of St. Dennis.

Justice James Nelson told Sprigg he didn't think Sheehy should have written that letter. But Sprigg said that the response Sheehy got to his letter - a firm defense of the client at the expense of the regional supervisor's feelings - shows the public defender system works.

"Well, that's this case," Justice Brian Morris said. "We have an attorney with a backbone. What happens in the next case?"

As is customary, the court did not immediately rule in the case.

Missoulian State Bureau reporter Jennifer McKee can be reached at 1-800-525-4920 or at jennifer.mckee@lee.net.