Plans for the state’s first public defender office that will handle only capital murder cases began with a single telephone call last year.

Concerned that so few lawyers were available to represent indigent defendants facing the possibility of a death sentence, Philip Wischkaemper of Lubbock, capital assistance attorney for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association (TCDLA), placed a call during the fall of 2006 to the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense in Austin.