O.C. Attorney’s Divided Time Assailed by Judges : Courts: Critics say lawyer with contract to defend indigents spends much of his time in South America.

A local attorney who for 15 years has held one of the county’s most lucrative contracts for representing indigents accused of crimes has come under attack by some Orange County judges who charge that he has all but abandoned his role in the courtroom but continues to share in the contract profits.

Court officials confirm that attorney William W. Stewart sometimes communicates with the county court system by telephone or fax from his import-export business more than 3,000 miles away in Colombia, South America.

Judges say Stewart has been able to hold the contract and tend to his far-flung business interests by “sub-letting” hundreds of indigent cases to other criminal lawyers who share in the annual fees, which can range from $700,000 to nearly $1 million.

County officials said Friday the complaints--which include concerns about delays in getting Stewart’s attorneys to court--have prompted them to launch a review of Stewart’s operations.

“The guy is shipping cases around the county and gets a couple hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing,” an angry Municipal Judge Margaret R. Anderson said this week during a judges’ meeting, during which the handling of indigent cases was discussed.

Friday, Stewart acknowledged that he has not appeared in court “as often as I would like to in the past four years,” but defended his firm and his other contract attorneys as having provided the county and indigent clients with an “excellent level of service.”

Stewart took particular exception to criticisms of his South American interests in a lobster and flower import/export business, saying that out-of-country travel has not interfered with his management of the contract, which involved about 1,270 criminal misdemeanor and felony cases last year.

“What business is it of theirs what I do with my time as long as the contract services are being fulfilled? I don’t know where the hell she is coming from,” he said, referring to Anderson.

The controversy comes at a time when the county is locked in a raging debate over how to lower the cost of providing attorneys for people who cannot afford their own lawyers.

Figures released this week show that Orange County has paid $2.6 million to private attorneys to handle 99 murder cases which were completed last year. At roughly $27,237 per homicide case, the bill is about $8,000 less than what Los Angeles County pays for the typical murder case.

But officials are nonetheless looking at reducing costs in homicide and other criminal cases where private defense attorneys are required.

The public defender’s office generally handles the defense of indigents, but in criminal cases where there is more than one defendant or the office has declared other conflicts of interest, those cases are delegated to private attorneys under contract to the county.

Since 1979, Stewart’s firm has held the contract for conflict cases originating in the county’s court system in Santa Ana.

The indigent-defense debate hit a boiling point Wednesday during a meeting of the county’s Alternate Defense Steering Committee, which is considering a new policy for contract attorneys on indigent defense cases. The committee makes policy recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. Member include judges from all of the county’s court systems.

At that meeting, criticisms of Stewart’s contract performance were aired by some committee members, specifically Anderson and Municipal Judge Pamela L. Iles.

The judges’ criticisms have sparked a review of Stewart’s court operations by county budget office, while Municipal Judge Gregory H. Lewis in Santa Ana said separate plans are underway to address recent delays in getting contract attorneys in court for various mandated appearances.

“The service is off and on,” Lewis said. “We might have various pretrial hearings that are delayed because of the unavailability of an attorney.”

Anderson and Iles, however, centered their criticism on Stewart’s practice of farming cases to outside attorneys and its potential for blurring the contractor’s accountability for the cases assigned to his firm. Stewart said six attorneys from his firm and six in outside practices handle the caseload under the contract.

At Wednesday’s volatile meeting, John Palacio, a leader of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, questioned whether Stewart’s firm was more concerned about profits than the welfare of his indigent clients.

“This points up the need to better manage how these contracts are let out,” he told the committee.

But Superior Court Executive Officer Alan Slater cautioned the group against such harsh judgments of Stewart’s performance, saying that nothing in the contract prohibited him from using outside attorneys to handle the caseload.

“That’s a big contract and it has always required multiple attorneys,” Slater said Friday. “But sometimes attorneys change and judges change and it takes some time to settle.”

Slater acknowledged that Santa Ana judges have become concerned recently about delays in getting the contract attorneys to court for various court appearances. As a result, Judge Lewis said a system is being considered that would assign cases to Stewart and two other firms on a daily rotation basis.

Lewis, the presiding judge in the Santa Ana court where Stewart operates, described the quality of outside legal representation as “excellent,” but “we need more coverage.”

Both Slater and Lewis said they were aware of Stewart’s outside business interests. Slater said he sometimes receives an occasional fax or phone call from Colombia, but had little difficulty in maintaining communications with Stewart.

“If I don’t initially get him on the telephone, he’ll call back from wherever he is within a day,” Slater said.

Lewis characterized Stewart’s out-of-country business as a “medium worry” in a contract that requires constant communications.

“I don’t think it is a serious impediment right now,” Lewis said.

Ron Coley, who handles court management and budget issues for the county administrative office, said Stewart’s contract “sure has our attention. Obviously this is a concern to us.”

County Budget Director Fred A. Branca said the Stewart matter had been discussed internally and there were plans to review how the court’s business was being conducted.

“We have been assured by Alan Slater that whatever is being conducted is in compliance with the contract,” Branca said. “I’m not sure what this is all about.”

Stewart said the criticism is part of plan to discredit him and possibly position another firm to take over the contract.

“I’ve been doing this for many, many years without a problem,” he said.

He said Anderson, who sits on the Municipal Court bench in Newport Beach, and Iles, who is assigned to Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, have no experience with his firm’s performance in Santa Ana.

“I don’t know where the hell they are coming from,” Stewart said. “They don’t know about the real business world and how business gets done, but they are more than happy to speak up.”

Stewart acknowledged the judges’ concerns about the unavailability of attorneys in some cases. But he said they were no more serious than the “holes” in availability of prosecutors during tight budget times.

“The truth is, I spoiled those courts in years past,” Stewart said. “We used to flood the courts with attorneys. But these are tough economic times.”