Before the court

The San Mateo County Bar Association has been named to receive the 2012 Harrison Tweed Award for the "continuing and pervasive excellence” of its Private Defender Program over the past 43 years. The Award will be presented to the SMCBA at the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association on Aug. 3 in Chicago. The Award is given on behalf of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

San Mateo County does not have a traditional Public Defender’s Office. Since 1968, the County of San Mateo has contracted with the San Mateo County Bar Association to provide indigent criminal defense and to fulfill this obligation the Bar Association has created the Private Defender Program, which works to guarantee that a person accused of a crime who is too poor to employ an attorney is ensured the Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel for his or her defense.

The Private Defender Program is appointed by the San Mateo County Superior Court to represent all persons financially eligible for counsel at public expense, including but not limited to: persons accused of all felonies and misdemeanors, juveniles in delinquency cases, juveniles and parents in dependency cases and cases brought pursuant to the provisions of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act. Chief Defender John Digiacinto, who has been with the PDP since 1989 and has been in charge since 2000, is responsible for the overall operation of the program. Digiacinto has personally handled the complete range of criminal and juvenile cases, up to the defense of the most serious of felonies, including capital murder cases.

At the time of arraignment in the San Mateo County Superior Court, a person who wishes to be represented by a court-appointed attorney completes a financial declaration form and submits it to the Court. If the Court determines that the defendant is eligible for court-appointed counsel, the Private Defender Program is appointed. Every day, at every arraignment calendar, there is a PDP lawyer present to represent each qualifying person.

All of the approximately 100 lawyers on the PDP panel to whom criminal cases are assigned are in private practice in San Mateo County. As would be expected, the PDP thoroughly checks the personal and professional backgrounds of all attorneys who apply for acceptance to the panel. In addition, an evaluation is made of the devotion of the applicant to the representation of the poor as opposed to a desire to create a supplemental cash flow. The single most important factor in evaluating an applicant is his or her reputation for honesty and integrity in all segments of the criminal justice community. The PDP has been fortunate to attract and retain highly skilled lawyers both from private practices and from other defender and prosecutorial agencies.

The Hon. Beth Labson Freeman, Presiding Judge of the San Mateo County Superior Court, said in support of PDP’s nomination for the award: "Enabling private practitioners to serve the community while maintaining a private practice has been the cornerstone of the success of the PDP. Our county has been able to draw from a more varied and experienced field of attorneys than it otherwise would have been able to accomplish. Cases that present novel and complex legal and factual issues are directed to attorneys who have been vetted and trained by the PDP. The vast array of specialized skills required to assist our indigent parties could never be amassed in a more traditional public defender program, which would in turn require a search for a private attorney who was not accustomed to handling indigent defense.”

Laurence A. Benner, Professor of Law and Managing Director of the Criminal Justice Programs of California Western School of Law, in a letter of support for the San Mateo County Private Defender Program in its candidacy for the Harrison Tweed Award, said, "It is fair to say that the PDP is in fact a model for the nation, demonstrating how a coordinated assigned counsel system should operate. The PDP is structured at every step to ensure high quality, client centered representation – from the selection and training of lawyers to be on its panels, to access to the investigative and forensic resources necessary to conduct an effective defense, to the control of attorney caseloads and evaluation of performances and outcomes.”

Susan E. Cohn is a member of the State Bar of California. She may be contacted at susan@smdailyjournal.com.