Panel Offers Novel System for Legal Defense of Needy

The San Diego County Indigent Defense Advisory Board on Wednesday endorsed a proposal to scrap the existing system of contracting with private lawyers to defend indigents and replace it with a novel quasi-public defender program.

Decimated by vacancies and absences, the 11-member board voted 3-2 for the “community defender organization” proposed last month by a blue-ribbon commission sponsored by the University of San Diego School of Law, the San Diego County Bar Assn. and the county Board of Supervisors.

The advisory board rejected the arguments of Melvin Nitz, director of the county Office of Defender Services, who favors expanding an experimental public defender program into a full-fledged, traditional public defender office that would represent the bulk of the 30,000 indigents accused of crimes in San Diego County each year.

Under the community defender plan that won the advisory board’s support, a staff of salaried attorneys would be hired by an independent, 18-member board of trustees to provide defense services in the Superior, Municipal and Juvenile courts. Proponents of the plan contend the board would have more clout than the appointed head of a public defender office in lobbying supervisors to fund defense programs.

“The money all comes from the same place, but I think it makes a major difference who’s asking for it,” said board member Marc Adelman, a San Diego attorney.

Critics of the plan, which is modeled on the office that represents indigents in San Diego’s federal courts, said a traditional public defender’s office of civil service attorneys was a time-proven system that would provide the county with more predictable costs for indigent defense.

“(The blue-ribbon commission) says the community public defender would just be an experiment,” noted attorney Clifton Blevins, a board member who favored Nitz’s plan. “Well, I think we should be done experimenting.”

Board members agreed it was time to eliminate the county’s contract defense system, whose critics include the American Bar Assn., the State Bar of California and other legal authorities. The report of the blue-ribbon commission, for instance, scored the system as “inadequate to ensure quality representation” and cited what it called “glaring breakdowns” in defense services in Juvenile Court, Traffic Court and the El Cajon Municipal Court.

Board members--appointed by county supervisors and area bar associations--were skeptical of cost estimates for both the community defender and public defender proposals. Nitz has estimated that a public defender system would cost about $10.8 million next year, as opposed to estimates of about $14 million for preserving the contract system or establishing a community defender office.

“I don’t think these costs are going to hold up whether it’s the community public defender or the public public defender,” said board member Dan Bacal, an El Cajon lawyer. “I think we’re going to get duped on these numbers.”

The advisory board’s recommendation will be passed along to the county supervisors, who also have been promised a recommendation from Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey by mid-May.

Nitz has urged Hickey to support creation of a full-fledged public defender office. Meantime, members of the CAO’s staff are inclined to urge Hickey to support “a blend” of the community defender and public defender systems, according to research analyst Lyn Angene, who attended Wednesday’s meeting.