Local News in Brief : Countywide

Completing the county’s new legal system for representing poor people accused of crimes, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the creation of an in-house department to oversee the assignment of so-called conflict cases to private attorneys.

Conflict cases are those in which the public defender’s office cannot represent an indigent defendant because of a conflict of interest. Most such cases, which total about 4,500 annually, involve multiple defendants.

Under the plan unanimously approved by the supervisors, a five-person county department, costing about $2.4 million a year, will be established to assist the courts in appointing attorneys to the conflict cases on a rotating basis. The San Diego Municipal and Superior courts have already formed an eight-attorney screening committee to evaluate lawyers seeking appointment to conflict cases.

Tuesday’s vote was the final step in the county’s replacement of its much-criticized previous method of defending low-income defendants. That system, which used a combination of county employees and private lawyers hired under contract, was widely faulted by national legal experts for its shoddy quality. In response, the supervisors earlier this year approved a traditional public defender’s office to handle that task.