Indigent Defense System Due for Final County OK

In an action that many hope will close a tense era in the history of San Diego’s legal community, the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve Tuesday the final element of the county’s newly created system for representing poor people accused of crimes.

If a recommendation by top county administrators is followed, the supervisors will authorize the creation of an in-house department to oversee the assignment of so-called conflict cases to private defense attorneys.

Conflict cases involve annually about 4,500 defendants whom the public defender’s office cannot represent because of a conflict of interest. Most cases involve multiple defendants.

Under the proposal favored by the chief administrative officer, a five-person county department will be launched to assist the courts in appointing attorneys to the conflict cases on a rotating basis. The system will cost about $2.4 million a year.

Screening Committee Picked

Already, the San Diego Municipal and Superior courts have named a screening committee of eight criminal defense attorneys who will evaluate lawyers seeking appointments to the cases. The committee will screen candidates for their experience to handle misdemeanor, felony and juvenile matters.

“We feel that having peers screen attorneys is a more appropriate and efficient system than having the court appoint attorneys on an individual basis,” Presiding Municipal Judge H. Ronald Domnitz said. “The main concern of the courts is quality control--ensuring that the people selected engage in continuing education so they have experience to handle the cases to which they are assigned.”

Both the San Diego County Bar Assn. and the Law Center at the University of San Diego School of Law had expressed interest in serving as overseer of the appointment system under contract with the county.

But Assistant Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said county officials and judges who studied the alternatives agreed the job should be left to an in-house department.

“It was the consensus of everyone involved that having a county officer in charge was the way to go,” Janssen said. “That decision was partly based on the feeling that the county would have the ability to keep costs under control.”

Edward (Ned) Huntington, outgoing president of the county bar association, said the legal organization has “no problem” with Janssen’s proposal and offered to oversee the conflict system “as a courtesy.”

‘Answering to Same Master’

“But I do feel there is a conflict having both the public defender and the conflicts administrator answering to the same master, so to speak,” Huntington said. “I don’t think they should both be under the same monetary manager.”

Janssen, who does not believe the county has a conflict of interest because the two offices will operate as separate entities, said each judicial district in the county will have its own rotating panels of attorneys qualified to handle the cases. He said the panels will probably be divided into eight categories of crime: three felony categories, three misdemeanor categories, one juvenile delinquency category and one category to handle making abused children dependents of the court.

Thomas Ryan, a member of the group that will evaluate attorneys for appointment to the list in the San Diego judicial district, said the committee is mapping out how the system will work and drafting qualifications for lawyers interested in conflict work.

The conflict system represents the final step in the county’s effort to create a replacement for its widely criticized method of providing low-income defendants with a criminal defense. Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors approved a traditional public defender’s office to handle that task, despite a competing proposal from a nonprofit group known as Community Defenders Inc.

Formerly, the county used a combination of county employees and privately employed attorneys under contract to defend poor people in court. That system was criticized by national legal experts for its shoddy quality.