San Mateo County’s Private Defender
Program lacks proper evaluation and officials cannot prove it meets with state
and federal guidelines to provide competent counsel for poor defendants,
according to a civil grand jury report released Monday.
The county is the only in the state with
a population over 500,000 that does not work through a Public Defender’s Office
to provide such counsel, according to the report.
Detractors of the program contend it
leads to many black and Latino defendants taking plea deals with the District
Attorney’s Office rather than finding justice with a jury.
Blacks and Latinos are already unfairly
targeted by police and then don’t get the proper legal representation they are
entitled to, said Marie Davis, the former president of the local chapter of the
NAACP.
“It seems to be that minorities winning
cases using the private defender program is rare,” Davis said Monday.
She said attorneys in the program don’t
spend enough time defending their clients who routinely end up in jail.
The county instead contracts with the San
Mateo County Bar Association to provide legal services for its indigent
defendants. Attorneys in the program are considered independent contractors and
are not county employees.
The program’s Chief Defender John
Digiacinto said Monday he is open to more frequent evaluations.
“We enjoy the scrutiny,” he said.
Claims that black or minority defendants,
however, cannot win a case in the county are also “simply not true,” he said.
“The decision whether to go to trial is
up to the client. We encourage them to go to trial,” Digiancinto said.
According to the civil grand jury report,
the agreement with the Bar allows for contract evaluations at any time but none
were conducted for nearly a decade between 2003 and 2012.
It also found that the last three
evaluations of the contract, in 2001, 2003 and 2012, did not address whether
the county considered state and federal guidelines in its review.
In the 2012 evaluation of the program,
the civil grand jury found that it was limited to public input to those
specifically invited to participate and was not open to the public.
Supervisor Dave Pine was on the 2012
review panel of the program.
He agrees with the civil grand jury’s
recommendations.
The Private Defender Program serves an
important function, he said.
“People’s liberties are on the line,” he
said.
The grand jury is calling for a “more
disciplined review of the program and that makes sense,” Pine said Monday.
He wants to see more clients participate
in surveys and public hearings to get a better sense of how well the program
works.
“In time, we would have more precise data
on the performance of the program,” he said.
The three evaluations also did not
conclude whether the Private Defender Program “continues to be the best model
for the county to provide indigent legal defense,” according to the civil grand
jury report.
The San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury is
recommending the county Board of Supervisors to conduct evaluations of the
Private Defender Program at least every five years; determine whether it meets
state and federal guidelines; open up the evaluations to the general public;
and to determine whether it continues to be the best model for the county for
providing indigent legal defense.
The Private Defender Program was adopted
in the county in 1968. It continues because “most county officials regard it as
well managed, effective and economical,” according to the report.
The program’s private attorneys, about
110, handled about 20,000 cases in 2014.
July 7, 2015
San
Mateo Daily Journal
By Bill
Silverfarb
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