Pro bono private attorneys play an important role in the work of Santa Clara County’s Public Defenders Office (PDO), says a new county civil grand jury report, “Volunteer Justice: The Power of Pro Bono Partnerships [in the] County of Santa Clara Public Defender’s Office (PDO).”
The grand jury doesn’t report the origin of the investigation, except to say that it “sought to understand the process involved in obtaining representation from a public defender and the circumstances under which the PDO would seek assistance from a private law firm.”
The grand jury’s conclusions are unambiguously clear: pro bono attorneys support “the PDO’s commitment to providing a robust defense to all defendants.” Far from being atypical or rare, private attorneys commonly provide pro bono work for public defenders’ clients.
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to criminal defendants “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” In 1921, California passed legislation creating county offices to “defend, without expense to them, all persons who are not financially able to employ counsel and who are charged with the commission of any contempt, misdemeanor, felony or other offense.”
California’s law became the model across the U.S., and Santa Clara County established the public defenders’ office in 1965. Each PDO attorney handles about 220 cases at any given time. While lawyers aren’t mandated to do pro bono work, they’re encouraged to do that work; starting next year, law firms will be required to report their pro bono work.
Private firms can help provide additional resources to the PDO, which may not have the necessary in-house expertise for specialized cases, explains the grand jury.
These cases include white collar crime, government integrity cases, securities fraud, money laundering and tax evasion, the report says.
“These types of cases involve a large volume of discovery and/or documents, are complex, typically require specialized analysis or expertise, and often involve extra hours of work to prepare a defense,” read the report.
The grand jury concluded that the pro bono attorney program “enables the PDO to leverage expertise and resources in its defense of a client, benefiting both the PDO and the client.”
Last year, former Santa Clara City Council Member Anthony Becker was defended by a public defender in his perjury trial, who also received outside counsel from pro bono attorneys.
Other investigations the grand jury completed this year include county procurement systems, San José fire department recruitment, Registrar of Voters audit procedures and juvenile justice.
You can read the report on the grand jury’s website, santaclara.courts.ca.gov/CGJ#GrandJuryReports.
Carolyn Schuk can be reached at carolyn@santaclaraweekly.com.
Related Posts:
Council Members Call Out “Cherry-Picking” in Civil Grand Jury Personal Responses
Civil Grand Jury’s Changing Role in Santa Clara City Politics
Civil Grand Jury Report Finds Hindsight is 20/20
Amazing!!! A grand jury report is released and not a peep from Queen Gillmor and her minions. Silently released in the middle of June, it answers the question that Special Advisor to the Mayor Kirk Vartan and Special Ethics Advisor to the Mayor Tom Shanks had about Anthony Becker and his legal team.
The Special Advisors Vartan and Shanks probably wrote complaints to the grand jury about Becker’s pro bono legal team from Goodwin-Procter. The blogger Robert Haugh made a stink about it, Vartan and Shanks called into meetings with concerns about it. It’s obvious they were the source of the complaints. If they did any of their homework they would have found the answer in fact Robert Haugh admitted the answer in his own piece asking the DA’s office about it and that there is an actual program that combines the forces of Public Defenders and pro bono attorneys/firms.
The Grand Jury did their job by rejecting the Gillmor narrative pushed by Kirk Vartan and Tom Shanks. Grand Jury realized they could lie the last few years in the last reports in Santa Clara but can’t lie about public defenders and attorneys cause they would surely be corrected.
Becker was never in violation, he had a constitutional right to legal representation. His public defender did what many do with large cases like Becker’s, he got help. Public Defenders have so many cases and workload so I am sure the help by the pro bono team was not purely for Becker’s benefit, it was surely for the Public Defenders office benefit.
So where are the Gillmor minions? It doesn’t fit the narrative, that’s why Queen Gillmor, pizza guy Vartan or ethics ‘expert’ Shanks or Gillmor-Jude Barry blogger Robert Haugh haven’t said anything. Remember how vocal they all were about Becker’s legal team??