Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout announced plans Tuesday not to seek reelection next year.

Haughwout will have served for 24 years when she steps down in January 2025.

“I’m going to miss it. Yes, I love what I do,” she said Tuesday. “Most every day I have loved, loved, loved my job. I work with fabulous people in this office, they are very inspiring.”

In her six elections, she had just one challenger, in 2016.

In that 2016 race, she focused on her efforts to create teams to focus on mental health and juvenile cases, a mentoring program to help younger attorneys, and said she emphasizes programs to help nonviolent offenders stay out of jail as well as re-entry programs to help people leaving jail find jobs and homes.

She said Tuesday in a phone interview those efforts continued to grow and have an impact, with expanded mental health court services to get people outside of the regular court process. And a social worker is assigned to ensure services are provided.

The public defender oversees 100 defense attorneys.

Haughwout has stepped in to personally handle the defense of some high-profile cases. Among them: Paul Michael Merhige, who killed his twin sisters, his aunt and his cousin’s 6-year-old daughter at the end of a Thanksgiving dinner celebration in 2009.

A year later was the high-profile case of Neal Jacobson, who killed his wife and twin sons, age 7.

In both those cases, the clients had mental health issues, and the prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, Haughwout said. She was “successful getting life resolutions.”

Then there was the 2018 defense of Corey Johnson, who killed a 13-year-old boy and also stabbed a woman and her son. In that case, he was convicted.

“Sometimes it’s not the win or loss,” Haughwout said, but rather “the opportunity to advocate what is the most important, that the client feels their story was told.”

Haughwout had a criminal defense practice before becoming public defender, and said in a statement her accomplishments include fostering a culture of client-centered representation, advocating for services that can address economic and behavioral challenges of inmates in the system, and attracting high-quality lawyers to the office despite “cost of living and pay challenges in our community.”

In the statement, Haughwout said it’s been a privilege to represent defendants “whose lives and liberty are at stake.”

“However, it’s time for new leadership to build upon the innovations that have occurred and further the mission of protecting the rights of the most vulnerable and the fairness and equity of a legal system that must continously be held to the highest of standards.”

Now for retirement plans. “There aren’t really,” she said. “I’m going to work up till Dec. 31, 2024. I have not made any plans for after that. I will not be gardening and sleeping late, it’s just not my style. In one form or another, it will continue to be working for the underserved in our community, (that’s) what this job has been and I’m sure I will continue that work.”

In the courthouse there will be another major change. In June, Dave Aronberg said he won’t seek a fourth term as Palm Beach County’s top prosecutor. Aronberg was elected as Palm Beach County state attorney in 2012 and reelected in 2016 and 2020.

Like Haughwout, his current term lasts until January 2025.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at . Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash