Implementing Standards With the Help of a NLADA Management Audit in Riverside County, California

A sweeping management audit by NLADA examining the operation of the public defender office in Riverside County, California, is helping significantly in moving the office toward improved levels of staffing and funding in accordance with national standards for indigent defense systems. The audit was conducted in October 1999 by a seven-member NLADA team under a contract with the county Board of Supervisors, and the final report was submitted in January 2000.

The 70-page report made recommendations for action in 19 areas, including caseloads, staffing, attorney rotation, office organization, training, supervision, counsel at arraignment, vertical representation, conflicts policy, technology, external relations, juvenile representation, investigator resources, social workers, accounting systems, and support staff. A particularly sensitive area, which had triggered the County Board's desire for an audit, was the public defender's representation in civil cases, including allegations of fraud and mismanagement concerning the office's handling of conservatorships. All recommendations were made by reference to standards developed by NLADA from the mid-1970's onward governing the operation of indigent defense systems and attorney performance.

The report was viewed locally as scathingly critical of the office. The Los Angeles Daily Journal reported that NLADA, a national "watchdog group that champions effective legal assistance for the poor," had "lambasted" the office for being "not on an equal par" with the prosecutor's office and for having staff who are "overworked, underpaid, undertrained, undersupervised and underequipped." The Journal dwelt on NLADA's findings that the failure to furnish counsel at arraignment in all misdemeanors and many felonies deprived at least 12,000 indigent people annually of their right to counsel and resulted in widespread uncounselled guilty pleas.

Nevertheless, the report was welcomed by both the county and the public defender. Chief public defender Gary Windom, who took office shortly before the audit, called the NLADA report "professional and thorough," and used it to request 36 new attorney positions plus support staff, a senior training attorney, additional office space, and a new management information system. The County Executive acted immediately, pending the Board's later consideration of all the proposals in Windom's report, to fund four attorney positions, three other staff, and the training supervisor. The County Executive praised Windom for "carefully considering" the NLADA audit, and said that the report "lays a solid foundation for the important work the lies ahead."

The NLADA report was "professional and thorough," Windom told Indigent Defense. "It gave me the blueprint for what this office ought to look like."

The audit team was led by Marshall Hartman, Deputy Defender for the Capital Litigation Division of the Illinois State Appellate Defender Agency, formerly Public Defender of Lake County, Illinois, and former Director of Defender Services and Acting Executive Director of NLADA. Members included David Meyer, Chief Deputy Director for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, and formerly Chief Deputy Public Defender and Acting Public Defender in Los Angeles County; Theodore Gottfried, State Appellate Defender of Illinois; Mary Broderick, Executive Director of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and former Defender Director of NLADA; Rita Fry, Chief Public Defender of Cook County, Illinois; Scott Wallace, Director of Defender Legal Services for NLADA; and Ronald Gottlieb, Senior Counsel and Training Director in the NLADA Division of Defender Legal Services.

NLADA's mission of offering management audits as a means of implementing standards and improving indigent defense systems is described in the 1996 Final Report of NLADA's Blue Ribbon Committee on Indigent Defense Services. For more information about NLADA's management audit and technical assistance programs, contact NLADA's Division of Defender Legal Services, Jo-Ann Wallace, Chief Counsel, or Scott Wallace, Director.

Return to March/April article index