Cost-Cutting Plan for Legal Defense of Indigents OKd

A plan designed to save $1.5 million a year in defending people who cannot afford their own lawyers was adopted by the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The recommendations include setting a ceiling on how much court-appointed, county-paid lawyers can earn in a month to defend accused murderers, improving bookkeeping in the public defender’s office and increasing the practice of contracting with attorneys to handle cases at lower fees.

In a related action, the supervisors approved an increase in staff in the county public defender’s office, which represents 85% of the defendants unable to pay for a lawyer, and has an annual budget of $8 million.

“Last year I called the present system of providing legal defense to indigents a system that has gone haywire,” supervisors Chairman Ralph B. Clark said. He said the county pays an additional $8 million to lawyers to defend poor clients ineligible for services of the public defender because of conflicts.

“A large share of that $8 million goes to a handful of private lawyers who bill up to $18,000 a month for legal representation of capital cases,” in which a defendant faces the death penalty, Clark said.

“Every case that requires this outside help costs more than the public defender’s office. Every case that uses our contract agreement saves the taxpayers money.”

Limiting Attorneys’ Fees

A report last week by the county administrative office said that the county could save an estimated $500,000 per year by limiting the fees of defense attorneys in capital cases to slightly more than $8,200 per month.

Although some attorneys said that $18,000 per month was not excessive and reflected a lawyer’s charging $75 per hour for about a 60-hour week, the report stated that $8,200 was fair because an attorney could still have private clients.

Despite the report’s recommendations, it is judges who appoint lawyers to defend indigents and who approve the attorneys’ bills, which the county then must pay. The federal and state constitutions require appointment of a lawyer to defend an indigent defendant.

County judges were consulted on the report and have helped set up a contract system for defense of indigents that was praised by Clark, but it is unknown whether the judges will go along with the $8,200 limit on fees.

Everett W. Dickey, Superior Court presiding judge, was not available for comment.

Dickey’s predecessor as presiding judge, Richard J. Beacom, said that he had not read the report but that $75 an hour was not an excessive fee for a lawyer.

“You couldn’t get a civil lawyer for that and you couldn’t get a more serious case” than one involving the death penalty, said Beacom, who now presides over civil cases. Death penalty cases are “a field of law that’s very costly to the taxpayer,” Beacom said.

“If you’re getting a good, honest billing at $75 an hour, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. If I was a lawyer, you couldn’t pay me enough to take one of those. They eat you alive. You never sleep. You get totally involved. They take more out of you than anything else,” Beacom said.

When a deputy public defender is unable to defend a client accused of murder and facing the death penalty, a judge turns to a panel of 15 attorneys who have agreed to take on such cases at a lower-than-normal fee of $65 per hour for time in court and $50 per hour for preparation time.

Fees Much Higher

But if none of the 15 members of the “homicide panel” is available, the judge must appoint another attorney who is not bound by the lower fee schedule. Non-panel attorneys’ fees in death penalty cases average nearly five times that of panel lawyers, the report said.

Clark directed the administrative office to report back to the supervisors in six months on the implementation of the program.

“This indigent legal representation will continue to haunt county government, since it is the other side of the coin to jail overcrowding,” Clark said.

“The more arrests, the more public defenders. Longer sentences mean more prisoners and jail overcrowding. This county faces a crisis in jail overcrowding and controlling indigent defense costs. This is an important first step.”

Last year a federal judge found the supervisors and Sheriff Brad Gates in criminal contempt of court for not heeding the judge’s 1978 order to end overcrowding in the main men’s jail in Santa Ana.

The supervisors agreed to add eight lawyers, two investigators and four clerks to the public defender’s office at an additional cost of $336,500 per year.