Community Defender Plan Criticized : Panel’s Proposal to End Contract System Faces Tough Scrutiny

The authors of a report urging an overhaul of San Diego County’s system for providing criminal representation to the poor defended their proposals Thursday against doubts about their viability and cost-effectiveness.

At a meeting of the county’s Indigent Defense Advisory Board, members of the blue-ribbon panel that this week proposed replacing the county’s contract defense system with a quasi-public defender office said the new office might save money in the long run while providing indigent defense with the political constituency it has always lacked in San Diego.

Nonetheless, some prominent legal community leaders attending the meeting stopped short of endorsing the blue-ribbon panel’s proposed “community defender office,” in which salaried lawyers would represent most of the county’s $12 million-per-year caseload of more than 30,000 indigent defendants. Most of those cases now are handled by private lawyers under contract to the county.

San Diego attorney Gerald Blank, chairman of the State Bar of California’s committee on criminal defense, said the committee has found that a conventional, civil-service public defender office would have more institutional clout to fight for funding for indigent defense than the non-governmental office envisioned by the blue-ribbon commission.

“No matter what you do, if you don’t fund it, it ain’t going to work,” Blank warned.

Judge Michael Burley of Vista Municipal Court, meanwhile, urged the commission to reconsider its opposition to retaining the existing contract system, which he said has proved that it can work when it is adequately monitored and managed.

Other attorneys pointed to the success of contract defense in the South Bay Municipal Court and the importance of maintaining a role for private lawyers in defending the poor as reasons to think twice before once again changing the county’s oft-revised indigent defense system.

The questions and doubts were a first indication of the distance to be covered if a consensus is to form on the direction to take the embattled defense program, bruised in the last few years by criticisms from the State Bar and the American Bar Assn., and by the failure of contract law firms in several courthouses.

Eventually, the Board of Supervisors will address the issue. But the supervisors may get more advice than they bargained for.

The advisory board plans to meet again within two weeks to take a stand on the blue-ribbon commission’s recommendations. Melvin Nitz, director of the county Office of Defender Services, has his own proposal for a traditional public defender’s office pending. The county’s chief administrative officer issued a report this week recommending expansion of an existing experiment with public defense in serious felony cases.

“This is a pivotal time for criminal defense services in this county,” said Sheldon Krantz, dean of the University of San Diego School of Law and a member of the blue-ribbon panel, isolating the one factor in the debate on which everyone could agree Thursday. “We really ought to apply the pressure for quality services.”