The Price Goes Up for County Indigents’ Defense

Adequate legal representation for indigents accused of crimes in San Diego County will cost at least 20% more than county supervisors were led to believe only a few weeks ago, according to a reworking of competing proposals to overhaul the county’s embattled criminal defense program.

In plans submitted this week to Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey, both Community Defenders Inc.--the quasi-public corporation established to take over the defense task--and the county’s Office of Defender Services said it would be impossible to represent the county’s indigent defendants with the 128 lawyers proposed by county analysts.

Instead, both organizations submitted costlier plans calling for larger staffs and lower caseloads than County Counsel Lloyd Harmon had recommended as necessary to serve the 40,000 county residents accused of crimes each year who are unable to afford private defense lawyers.

Phil Harry, acting director of the Office of Defender Services, said he could do the job for just over $13 million--more than 20% above the $10.8 million budget proposed by his predecessor, Melvin Nitz, for operation of a traditional public defender officer staffed by civil service lawyers.

Equal Pay Required

Harry’s plan would require 141 lawyers, nine fewer than under the earlier Office of Defender Services proposal. Its cost is increased by a requirement imposed by the county Board of Supervisors that defense lawyers be paid salaries equal to those of prosecutors doing similar jobs in the district attorney’s office.

Alex Landon, director of Community Defenders Inc., proposed a $13.5-million budget to run the indigent defense program outside the civil service under the aegis of an independent board of directors. The Landon plan would employ 168 lawyers--21 fewer than under the $16.2-million plan initially offered by Community Defenders Inc.

Supervisors had asked the two organizations to submit budgets based on 128-lawyer staffs. Both drew up such plans but both told Hickey in written reports that the defense task could not be competently performed without more lawyers.

Lawyer caseloads at the lower staffing level “would be too burdensome, possibly leading to allegations of incompetence, reversal of convictions and a new trial,” Harry said in his report.

Even at the 168-lawyer level Community Defenders Inc. has proposed, Landon said, he was not “happy” with his group’s revised budget.

“I think our initial budget was the one we felt was necessary to provide the kind of quality defense program for San Diego that we had projected,” Landon said Friday. “What we’ve done now is tightened the belt and sort of tried to go with the spirit that the board indicated--that at this point there is not that kind of money.”

The Board of Supervisors is expected to review the new proposals at a meeting next month.

The supervisors last year voted in principle to transfer the defense job to Community Defenders Inc., in accord with the recommendations of a blue-ribbon commission of legal experts.

Indigents Badly Served

The commission found that San Diego’s unique, hybrid defense system--in which public defenders handle the most serious felony cases and the rest are apportioned to private lawyers under a variety of contract terms--was depriving indigents of adequate defense. The system had been developed in hopes of controlling defense costs but they had continued to spiral out of control, the commission concluded.

Plans to give the job to Community Defenders Inc. were sidetracked, however, when a county employees union pointed out that a recent amendment to the county charter prohibited the contracting-out of county services unless the outside contractor could be demonstrated to be more economical and efficient than in-house staff.

Supervisors requested the competing proposals from Harry and Landon to satisfy the charter requirement. But the proposals may not provide a clear indication of which plan better meets the test of economy and efficiency.

Landon noted that Harry’s proposal would place a large portion of the Juvenile Court defense function in a separate county department at an unspecified cost. If those costs were added back into Harry’s proposed budget, it might become more expensive than the Community Defender plan, he said.

Harry could not be reached Friday for comment.

The Office of Defender Services proposal also has generally higher lawyer caseloads than the Community Defender plan, Landon said.

“We feel at this point we’ve extended the caseloads out as far as they can go, and in some areas his are even higher than ours,” Landon said.

Harry’s revised plan does meet some of the criticisms leveled at the earlier in-house proposals. It would provide for training of young staff lawyers and utilize social workers to assist with juvenile and mental health cases.

Overall, Harry’s plan would direct more resources than Landon’s to the representation of felony defendants in the downtown courts. But it budgets 38% less than Landon’s plan for mental health cases, 33% less for the Vista courts and 28% less for Juvenile Court.