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Board of Supervisors Votes to Partially Restore Public Defender’s Budget

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San Francisco – Months of budget battles came to an end Tuesday as the Board of Supervisors voted to restore $650,000 to the Public Defender’s Office. The restoration is in addition to $300,000 that the Budget and Finance Committee voted to allocate to the office last month.

“I am very pleased that the Board voted to partially restore our budget,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi said. “In the end, we were able to make our case that equal justice for all San Franciscans matters.”

During discussion on Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s motion to restore the Public Defender’s budget, members of the board expressed their strong support for providing equal access to justice and indicated their willingness to consider a supplemental funding request later in the year.

Over 300 supporters, representing numerous community-based organizations and wearing t-shirts printed with the words “Save the Public Defender’s Office,” packed into the Board chambers and two overflow rooms in a show of support for restoring the office’s budget. The office initially faced a $1.9 million cut, proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

“We were overwhelmed by the level of community support we received. We are grateful to everyone who turned out to support us and for the vital services they provide to our clients everyday,” Adachi said.

Adachi expects that he will still have to turn away cases to the private bar and will be reviewing the impact of these cuts over the next few days.

The Public Defender’s Office has already reduced its staff by ten.

A Question of Parity?

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Fog City Journal
By Kwixuan H. Maloof
July 20, 2009

The recent discussion of whether the District Attorney’s Office should receive the same level of funding in the city’s budget add back process as the Public Defender’s office was curious to me, since the functions of the two offices are very different, as are the resources afforded to both. As a person who has worked in law enforcement both as a probation officer and as a public defender, I wish to bring some basic facts to light.

First, the resources afforded to the Public Defender are significantly less than those provided to the District Attorney. Although the Public Defender presently handles approximately 60 percent of all felony cases and 70 percent of all misdemeanor cases filed by the District Attorney, the Public Defender’s funding is approximately half of what the District Attorney receives.

The District Attorney’s Office has 290 full-time employees while the Public Defender’s Office has 163. That is 78 percent more employees than the Public Defender’s office. The District Attorney has 137 attorneys compared to 90 attorneys in the Public Defender’s office. This is 51 percent more attorneys. The greatest difference is the number of investigators. The District Attorney has total 89 investigators while the Public Defender only has 19. That is 369 percent more investigator employees than the Public Defender’s Office.

Additionally, the District Attorney’s office can rely on a police force with over 2,300 officers, a crime lab, the medical examiners unit and other agencies. For example, in a homicide or serious felony case, the police department typically assigns several full-time inspectors to work with the prosecutor throughout trial. The Public Defender cannot seek these resources from the police, who view the Public Defender as an adversary.

This difference in resources is also the result of historical inequities stemming from grant funding. Most government grants only allow prosecuting agencies to apply for funding. For example, the District Attorney receives $7 million in grant funding from the state, while the Public Defender receives less than $100,000. The federal funding is similarly lopsided. The District Attorney has received over $1 million in federal funding over the past few years, while the Public Defender has received none.

Second, the functions of each department are different. First of all, the District Attorney’s Office prosecutes cases that are brought to it by the police department. The police make the arrest, conduct the investigation, and then send the case to the District Attorney for prosecution. The District Attorney reviews the case, conducts additional investigations, interviews victims and witnesses and then represents the interests of the government in prosecuting the case in court by filing legal motions, appearing in the various hearings ordered by the court and if the case proceeds to trial, trying the case before a jury.

Once the District Attorney makes the decision to charge a case and the client is brought to court, the Public Defender is assigned to represent the individual. The individual then becomes a “client” and the Public Defender has the duty of making sure that the client is adequately represented in court. This includes filing all legal motions necessary to assert constitutional rights of the accused, including contesting the validity of a search or seizure of evidence, speedy trial rights and other issues that are presented in the case. The defender also conducts an independent investigation of the case and must interview police witnesses as well as locate additional witnesses who have not been interviewed by the police. The defender also gathers additional evidence to present in court and may consult with scientific experts, such as in DNA cases. The defender attempts to negotiate a settlement for the client to consider, or if the case does not resolve, provides representation at the trial.

There are other functions of each office which are unique to each office. For example, the District Attorney’s office provides support to victim-witness advocates who assist victims of crime in court proceedings. They also have a unit that prosecutes infractions. The Public Defender only provides representation in misdemeanor and felony cases, not infractions, but has other functions such as the Clean Slate program which helps rehabilitated offenders clear their record, for which there is no counterpart in the District Attorney’s office.

But in the end, there are several fundamental differences between the Public Defender and District Attorney that goes beyond simply tallying the responsibilities of each office. The first distinction is that public defenders can’t control the number of cases that it is assigned by the court. Unlike the District Attorney, who decides which cases to charge and which not to charge, the Public Defender has no control over its caseload. A prosecutor can decide to dismiss a case that he/she does not wish to try. The defender does not have this option. In the last year, the Public Defender’s office has experienced an increase in felony cases and serious felony cases. The office has stretched its resources to meet this increased caseload and is now 50 percent over our normal caseload capacity. This has been exacerbated by the fact that due to the economy, fewer people can afford to hire lawyers. This has had the effect of increasing our overall caseloads while the District Attorney’s caseload are not affected by whether people can, or cannot afford, a lawyer, since they prosecute all cases.

The other basic difference is the fact that defenders owe a separate ethical obligation to each client to provide competent and adequate representation, while prosecutors do not. Prosecutors represent “the state” in court. They do not have a client who they owe a duty of representation to. While prosecutors are expected to execute their responsibilities competently, they are not held responsible for lapses in duties towards a client. By contrast, public defenders who fail to adequately represent their clients face the prospect of being reported to the State Bar and possibly losing their license to practice law. Indeed, there has never been a prosecutor who has lost its license to practice law or even faced discipline for inadequate representation of the “state” and there are many stories of defenders who have run into trouble when they have failed to provide competent representation of a client.

Public Defenders cannot provide only 75 percent of the legal representation to which the client is entitled. A defender cannot tell clients that he/she can only interview 5 of 10 witnesses because he/she doesn’t have sufficient investigative support. The defender cannot tell the client that he/she can only file one motion in their case because it is too expensive to file all the appropriate motions. The defender cannot tell a client that he/she cannot properly evaluate fingerprints, DNA, gunshot residue, blood alcohol content, etc., because we lack the funding to consult with an expert.

Recently, I handled a complex homicide case that was over 35 years old. It was a complicated case which involved DNA experts, fingerprint experts, identification issues and more. As the defense attorney, I had to reconstruct the clients’ whereabouts from the past 35 years. The resources available to the District Attorney could have easily overwhelmed the resources available to our office.

As a native San Franciscan who has worked in the criminal justice system for nearly twelve years, I believe that both the District Attorney’s office and the Public Defender’s office need to be properly funded so that each office can fulfill its mission of ensuring that cases are properly prosecuted and that individuals accused of crime are competently represented. But I do think that it would be a miscarriage of justice for anyone to suggest that the Public Defender’s funding should be contingent on parity with the DA’s office, because the offices are not equal to begin with.

In this sense, “parity” is not the same as equality when it comes to funding this country’s promise of justice for all.

Kwixuan H. Maloof is the Misdemeanor Unit Managing Attorney for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

Board to Vote on Restoring Public Defender’s Budget on July 21, Please Attend

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The Board of Supervisors plans to vote on restoring funds to the Public Defender’s Office budget on Tuesday, July 21 at 2:00pm, in City Hall, Room 250. Please attend the hearing if you can!

Please meet on the steps of City Hall at 1:40pm where we will distribute Public Defender t-shirts to wear during the hearing. If you already have a Public Defender t-shirt, please wear it since we only have a limited supply. If you have any questions, please call Lea Villegas 415-575-4390 or lea.villegas@sfgov.org. Thank you!

Public Defender Outlines Impact of $1.6 Million Budget Cut

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San Francisco – Public Defender Jeff Adachi submitted a list of reductions that would be required if his office were forced to cut $1.6 million from its budget, as proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Adachi’s submission was in response to a letter of inquiry from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Adachi said that he would have to cut at least seven attorneys from his staff and would also have to eliminate at least five staff positions. The cuts would result in the elimination of the Mo’ MAGIC and BMAGIC programs, both of which are staffed by the Public Defender’s Office.

Adachi said that firing attorneys from his staff would actually cost the city $700,000 more a year than what it would save by reducing his staff, since these cases would have to be referred to more expensive private attorneys. Adachi noted that he has already reduced his staff by 10 and that he cannot provide proper representation to the 29,000 people the office is assigned to represent each year. Adachi said that he would have to withdraw from as many as 1,500 cases and that this would cause court delays that could drive up the cost of jailing inmates by up to $5 million.

At a press conference held on steps of the City Hall yesterday, Lt. Mike Slade, San Francisco Police Department, said that it would be a mistake to eliminate the MAGIC programs, which have united over 100 community-based organizations that serve families and youth in San Francisco’s Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods.

“As a police officer, I have worked with the MAGIC programs, and know that they help kids from getting into trouble,” Lt. Slade said.

MAGIC was formed in order to better coordinate the work of neighborhood-based service providers and to encourage collaborative programming to benefit children, including the 2,100 children represented by the Public Defender’s Office each year.

The office would also lose social workers who ensure that children in the juvenile justice system receive care, treatment and guidance consistent with their best interests, as mandated by the California Rules of Court. This includes creating individualized treatment plans, and integrating mental health, special education and counseling services available through the school district, government agencies and community-based service providers.

Adachi hopes that the Board of Supervisors votes to restore his budget. “It’s the right thing to do because it will ultimately save the city millions. It will also ensure that our justice system is working and that innocent people are not convicted of crimes they did not commit,” Adachi said.

Press conference to highlight the need to fully restore the Public Defender’s Office budget

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WHEN: Tuesday, July 14, 2009, noon

WHERE: San Francisco City Hall, Polk Street steps

WHO: Former clients of the Public Defender’s Office will explain how the legal services provided by the office contributed to positive outcomes in their lives. Among Tuesday’s many speakers are Scott Schell and John A. Jones Jr., who were both represented by the Public Defender’s Office from arraignment to expungement. Schell currently works for the Resolve to Stop Violence Project (RSVP), a Sheriff’s Department program that helps in-custody and post release offenders make changes in their lives to become active citizens in their communities. With the help of the Public Defender’s Office, Jones overcame addiction, obtained full-time employment and is now a motivational speaker. Among the public supporters who will speak to the need to fully restore the office’s budget are Lateefah Simon, Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and Tanya Weisheit, Deputy Director of Jail Psychiatric Services.

WHY: The Public Defender’s Office provides services to 29,000 people each year who are charged with a crime and cannot afford a lawyer. Currently, the office faces a $1.6 million shortfall and will be forced to lay-off attorneys and turn cases away at a cost to San Francisco of $3.3 million each year.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi has requested that the Board of Supervisors restore the office’s budget on the grounds that it is more cost-efficient to provide constitutionally mandated indigent defense services through a well-resourced, centralized office. A recent report by the Controller’s Office supported this position, yet the office is still facing budget cuts that will debilitate its ability to provide competent legal representation.

After the rally, the full Board of Supervisors will meet in City Hall, Room 250, at 2 p.m., when they will introduce the budget. Public Defender Adachi will again ask the Board to restore the Public Defender’s Office budget.

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Defending the Public Defender

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FogCityJournal.com
Opinion By Matt Gonzalez and G. Whitney Leigh, special to Fog City Journal
July 8, 2009

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is facing a $1.9 million dollar cut from his budget. The cut comprises nearly 10 percent of his operating budget, which is primarily used to pay for lawyers who provide services to the City’s poor.

No other big city department in San Francisco is facing cuts of this magnitude and the machinations that have led to this are among the most unusual at City Hall.

First, Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the public defender budget under the guise of saving money. He decided, against a trend followed in many other California cities (who are working to expand or create “second” public defense offices), that the public defender is too expensive and a large portion of its cases could be transferred to the private defense bar at a savings.

But audits by the City’s controller showed that Newsom’s plan to substitute private attorneys for public defenders would cost the city more, for simple reasons. Public defender lawyers work on a salary and do not earn overtime, even though their workload routinely compels a 10-hour+ workday. Private attorneys, by contrast, who customarily only handle cases the public defender cannot due to a conflict of interest, charge $85-$125 an hour. Not surprisingly, the evidence established Newsom’s plan to transfer cases to private attorneys would significantly increase the costs to the City by over $1 million dollars each year.

So why was this plan put forward in the first place?

Jeff Adachi, the only publicly elected Public Defender in California, is unafraid to disagree with our mayor (or any other public official) on policy issues and routinely exhibits independence.

For example, Adachi is a vocal opponent of the City Attorney’s use of so-called “gang injunctions,” that facilitate the profiling and unlawful arrest of African-American and Latino youth based on vague criteria easily susceptible to abuse. Adachi’s critique has proved prescient, as trial courts have found that several men have already been wrongfully identified by police as gang members.

Adachi also is a vocal critic of the community courts, a pet project of the mayor that diverts enormous funds to the prosecution of “quality of life” crimes – a project that many view as more important to Newsom’s gubernatorial aspirations than to making San Francisco a safer place to live. (Adachi staffed the court himself after the Mayor refused to allocate any resources to his office for doing so and a recent report shows that the court has been ineffective in its first three months of operation.)

Newsom’s proposed cuts would effectively require Adachi to lay off at least 15 lawyers – each of whom already handles a caseload that would stagger the average San Francisco attorney. The impact of such a reduction on the ability of attorneys to provide the poor and indigent with a basic criminal defense is hard to overstate.

Facing such severe budget cuts, Adachi sought help from the Board of Supervisors. Given the uncontested evidence that slashing the Public Defender’s office would cost the City greatly – in addition to harming the poorest among us – one would assume he would have found a receptive, or at least fiscally responsible ear.

But several members of the Board including many “progressives,” have endorsed a new, equally foolish and, in fact, more suspect justification for not helping preserve the Public Defender’s resources, inexplicably not understanding Adachi’s office’s role in aiding the poor.

The Board’s budget and finance committee initially voted 4-1 to reinstate $600,000 of his budget, but under the direction of Board President David Chiu, the budget committee decided to transfer $300,000 from Adachi’s budget to the District Attorney’s office. Chiu, a former prosecutor who once handled misdemeanor cases, justified his actions on July 1, 2009 by saying he could not support giving money to the Public Defender and not giving the equivalent to the District Attorney’s office.

Chiu’s reasoning is flawed for a number of reasons. Budgeting is based on need. Adachi established that his caseloads were high and that he would most likely be forced to outsource cases if the cuts took effect. So why on earth should there be an expectation that some of these monies first cut from, then restored to, his budget should be allocated to the District Attorney’s office?

But Chiu’s comments also demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between each office. The District Attorney’s office budget is $40 million, nearly twice the amount of the Public Defender’s budget. And the District Attorney receives over $7 million a year in state and federal grant funding not available to the Public Defender’s office.

Under these circumstances, simply taking $300,000 from the Public Defender’s office and giving it to the District Attorney for the sake of “equity” makes little sense, to put it mildly.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial in Adachi’s favor. On June 29, 2009 they called the Mayor’s proposed cuts “seriously shortsighted and dishonest”. They noted the Public Defender’s office of 90 lawyers handle nearly 29,000 cases a year.

No Supervisor that votes to cut this budget while transferring monies to the District Attorney’s office should call themselves “progressive.” By comparison, the District Attorney’s office has only suffered a 3 percent general fund cut (more easily absorbed in a budget twice the size) and will likely grow in size when homeland security and stimulus package money is taken into account.

So why are progressives taking money from our public defender and transferring it to the District Attorney’s office? That’s a question that the full Board will answer when it reconsiders the Public Defender’s budget on July 14th – ironically, Bastille Day.

In trying economic times, the workload of our public defender’s office is only going to expand. Gutting a department that is already overloaded with cases with substantially fewer attorneys and resources than the City Attorney’s office and District Attorney’s office doesn’t make sense. And turning a blind eye to the effect such cuts will have – on poor people accused of crimes denied adequate representation – or to the increased costs the City will incur as a result, is not consistent with San Francisco values, or common sense.

Matt Gonzalez & G. Whitney Leigh are partners in the law firm Gonzalez & Leigh LLP that primarily handles civil rights cases. They are both former deputy public defenders in San Francisco. Leigh also served as a deputy public defender in Santa Clara County and was a partner at Keker & Van Ness LLP, and Gonzalez is a former San Francisco Supervisor.

Newsom v. Public Defenders, Part II

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BeyondChron.org
Guest Editorial by John Lee
July 8, 2009

In my earlier submission, I predicted that the budget battle between the Mayor and the Public Defender’s office would end badly. What I didn’t predict is what actually happened.

Here’s the quick summary: Jeff Adachi has been battling the Mayor’s office for months, arguing that cutting his staff would cost the city more than it would save. Although Adachi undertook a grassroots campaign — including a justice summit, a City Hall rally and a grassroots campaign to mail in thousands of postcards — Newsom nonetheless chopped $1.9 million from Adachi’s $23 million dollar budget. When a City Controller’s report was issued supporting Adachi’s arguments, and the usually conservative Chronicle issued a strong endorsement of Adachi’s position, the Board of Supervisors’ budget committee responded by voting 4-1 to redirect $600,000 from the Superior Court’s budget to help cover the Newsom’s cut to the Public Defender’s budget.

Here’s the kicker: After a closed door meeting with the Mayor’s folks, Board President David Chiu and Budget Committee Chair John Avalos agreed to transfer $300,000 from Adachi’s budget and award it to the District Attorney. That’s the equivalent of fleecing someone and giving it to his or her adversary.

While it’s unclear what motivated Chiu and Avalos to reverse the Budget Committee’s 4-1 vote, what is clear is that they delivered Adachi a big slap in the face. While they could have simply reduced his allocation, what they did instead was to take $300,000 from his budget and give it to the District Attorney. Ironically, the money that they unceremoniously handed over to the DA originally came from the Superior Court’s fund to provide attorneys for poor people. (The committee had voted to take $1.2 million from this fund, giving half of it to Adachi, and directing the other half to its spending pot.)

Chiu and Avalos’ move was not revealed until the list of budget items restored to the city’s budget —known as “addbacks” — were released at around 6:00pm last Wednesday. According to the web blog SF Appeal’s coverage of the night, Adachi was not happy with the outcome.

After each of the Supervisors on the budget committee gave their “this is a great budget” speech, vice-chair Ross Mirkarimi moved to amend the budget to add an additional $450,000 to the Public Defender’s office, noting that the add backs failed to address the shortfall in the office’s budget. Although Supervisors Campos and Dufty voiced their support of the amendment, Avalos balked, saying that he didn’t feel comfortable with the decision and wanted to think about it. President David Chiu, who isn’t on the committee but was seated at the hearing, chimed in and said that any money given to the Public Defender had to be split with the District Attorney. Chiu’s statement was curious, given the fact that the offices have very different budgets (the DA’s budget is almost twice that of the Public Defender’s budget) and very different functions (the DA charges crimes while the Public Defender’s office has clients who they are required to defend).

Avalos’ refusal to support Mirkarimi’s amendment effectively froze the effort to add funds to Adachi’s budget. However, because Supervisor Dufty felt that Avalos should have time to consider the amendment, the decision was put over until July 14, when the full board will vote on the city’s budget.

That David Chiu, who is a former SF Deputy District Attorney and a political climber, used this opportunity to gain favor with climber Kamala Harris is not surprising. Chiu probably figured that by transferring $300,000 into Harris’ budget, he would earn a few political chits with Harris, who has her sights on the state’s Attorney General’s office. But it’s rather odd that Avalos, who was a social worker and union organizer before serving as Chris Daly’s chief aide, would deliver Adachi such a humiliating blow. According to Avalos’ campaign site, Adachi was one of the few elected officials and department heads to endorse Avalos’ bid for office (a decision I’m sure Adachi now regrets).

City hall insiders say that Avalos, as the chair of the Budget Committee, had a $75 million list of programs and services he wanted to have added back, but only $22 million available to spend from the committee’s review of department budgets. When Chiu and Avalos met with the Mayor’s folks behind closed doors, the Mayor magically came up with another $25 plus million for Avalos to spend. But there was a price to pay for the money: save the Mayor’s pet programs, such as the Community Justice Center, and help us screw Jeff Adachi.

Avalos had staunchly opposed the Community Justice Center as a waste of public resources and recommended defunding it. He had also voted, along with three other committee members, to restore $600,000 to the Public Defender’s budget. Why the about face? It all comes down to money, honey. So Adachi’s budget loss was just a by-product of a mayoral deal Avalos and Chiu couldn’t refuse.

What remains now is that Adachi will have to do what he had hoped to avoid: lay-off public defenders and begin to outsource cases to private attorneys. He will finally have the chance to prove that firing public defenders will cost taxpayers $1 million more a year than what it would save by cutting his staff. But perhaps the moral of this twisted story is that San Francisco corruption isn‘t in the graft or the exchange of envelopes which ensnared former Supervisor Ed Jew. It’s in the way that political business is done in this town by officials such as Newsom, Chiu and Avalos who make decisions based on political expediency, not on what is right.

It will be interesting to see what the Board of Supervisors’ does on July 14th when the matter of restoring the Public Defender’s budget will be considered again. This time, Adachi will need six, not three votes, and he may not be able to count on Avalos or Chiu to get there.

Signature Drive to Restore Public Defender’s Office Funding

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The Public Defender’s Office and the 29,000 people it represents need your support. The Mayor threatened to cut our budget by $1.9 million. The Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee restored part of our budget. We now need your help in asking the Board to restore our budget completely.

SIGN OUR PETITION asking members of the Board of Supervisors’ to restore our budget. You can download the petition here.

Sign it, get others to sign it too, then fax is back to us at 415-553-9810. We’ll make sure it gets to its destination.

S.F. cannot afford to cut public defender’s Finances budget

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San Francisco Examiner, June 26, 2009
Opinion by Rhoda Billings, Robert M.A. Johnson and Timothy K. Lewis

San Francisco, like many other areas of the country, is facing an unprecedented budgetary crisis. However, proposed budget cuts to the Public Defender’s Office threaten to exact a toll on The City that would greatly outweigh their modest fiscal benefits.

More than 45 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which found that “lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries.” The court concluded that governments have an obligation under the U.S. Constitution to provide legal representation for people charged with a felony who cannot afford to hire their own. Soon afterward, the court extended Gideon, applying the right to juvenile delinquency cases and to misdemeanor cases where imprisonment results.

This right to counsel is now accepted as a fundamental precept of American justice, yet is often implemented in ways that betray the great promise of Gideon. Only days ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said indigent defense services are in a state of crisis in our country.

We co-chaired the Constitution Project’s bipartisan National Right to Counsel Committee. Its members are individuals with expertise in every relevant part of the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, judges, victim advocates, defenders and scholars. In “Justice Denied: America’s Continuing Neglect of Our Constitutional Right to Counsel,” the committee unanimously concluded that this country’s indigent defense system is in crisis, that the government’s obligation to provide lawyers in these cases has for too long been ignored and that it cannot be ignored anymore. We issued 22 urgently needed recommendations for reforms, which we urge San Francisco to adopt.

Our recommendations are not just a matter of what the U.S. Constitution requires, they are also a means to conserve limited resources. Public defenders who are well trained and have the necessary resources can help ensure that a criminal trial is properly conducted and lower the chance of costly appeals. These public defenders can lessen the likelihood that innocent people will be wrongly convicted while the true perpetrators remain free, continuing to victimize society.

Every year, San Francisco’s public defenders represent more than 28,000 defendants, each handling a caseload that is two to three times what a private attorney would reasonably be expected to manage. Public defenders work extraordinarily long hours and, unlike other public servants such as police officers and firefighters, they are not paid any overtime compensation.

With such burdensome caseloads and work hours, the resources of the Public Defender’s Office are already stretched far beyond any reasonable limit. Any potential funding cut would only exacerbate the situation.

The proposed budget cut will also disproportionately affect minorities, who are most likely to need appointed lawyers. Compared to white defendants in San Francisco, blacks are 4.7 times and Hispanics 2.1 times as likely to need a public defender.

America’s criminal justice system is a model for the world. It contemplates defense lawyers who serve as the primary safeguard against the risk of wrongful conviction. It contemplates that the quality of justice should not be determined by the amount of money a criminal defendant has. The Sixth Amendment serves not just an individual charged with a crime, but all of us.

San Francisco is facing extraordinary budgetary pressure. However, the public defender model is the most cost-efficient way to fund this essential right to counsel. It appears that the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee recognized this when it voted to restore part of the office’s funding rather than to outsource cases to private attorneys.

However, the restoration of these funds will leave the office $1.3 million short of its proper funding level and will still require the office to withdraw from cases. Failing to fully fund the office will not only cost The City more in the long run, it will betray one of the U.S. Constitution’s most fundamental rights.

Rhoda Billings is a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Robert M.A. Johnson is district attorney for Anoka County, Minn., and Timothy K. Lewis is a former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. The authors are co-chairs of the Constitution Project’s National Right to Counsel Committee.

Don’t shortchange justice

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San Francisco Chronicle, Editorial
June 25, 2009

Some public duties can’t be shirked. One essential is the right to a public lawyer if a defendant is too poor to pay for a private attorney.

That may seem to be a given in this society, but in San Francisco, a civil liberties stronghold, it’s strangely not the case.

Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to cut $1.9 million from Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s $22 million budget. The trim, in the name of budget balancing, comes with a dose of political payback since the two have feuded for months.

“I didn’t intentionally want to get into a game of budget chicken,” Adachi said in a recent editorial board meeting. Public defenders throughout the state are facing similar cutbacks – and many lack the clout to do anything about it. As the state’s only elected public defender, Adachi has a formidable following and considerable political nerve.

So the fight is on.

The proposed cut is seriously shortsighted and dishonest. If a defendant can’t get a public defender, the job goes to a pool of private lawyers where one will take the case – and bill the city. Total savings: just about zero.

A report by City Controller Ben Rosenfield presented the gritty details, which should serve both sides in this debate. But the study upholds Adachi’s central point: The city can’t cut his budget and expect major savings in carrying out fundamental duties to provide indigent legal rights.

The report found that public and private attorneys cost roughly the same, a claim that undercuts Adachi’s belief that his staff is a bargain. Adachi’s staff of 90 attorneys now handles almost 29,000 cases a year.

While misdemeanors are dropping, time-consuming felonies are up in response to policy directives by the police and district attorney to focus on serious crime.

The public defender’s office cannot be immune from the economic realities facing city government. However, Adachi says these budget cuts will hurt his operations while not saving very much. The $1.9 million cut proposed by the mayor, he believes, will result in $1.4 million in private lawyer bills after he’s obliged to lay off 10 lawyers and farm out cases his remaining team can’t handle. In addition, there will be court delays and added jail time for the accused while private representation is lined up.

In some cases, outsourcing makes sense and can yield great savings. In this case, it does not.

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