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In a unanimous vote the San Benito County Board of Supervisors approved a two-year contract to hire attorney Harry Damkar for public defense services beginning May 1 as they study the feasibility of establishing a public defender’s office.
The board approved the contract at an annual cost of $996,000 with the option of a two-year extension at its April 9 meeting. The move comes after a state-issued report found that people in the county in need of a public defender were not being sufficiently served. The board initially approved the contract on March 12, but not a budget.
Damkar will move up from the second-tier public defender to the primary tier, replacing the Fitzgerald, Alvarez & Ciummo law firm. A contract for the second-tier public defense will go before the supervisors April 30.
The third-tier public defender, attorney Pamela Brown, will continue in that role.
The county’s second and third tiers serve as a back-up in case of conflict of interest, which happens when multiple people are charged for a crime in the same case, Sean Cameron, the county’s assistant county counsel, told BenitoLink.
Two supervisors asked to discuss creating a public defender’s office at a later date.
Before the contract vote, Supervisor Bea Gonzales said the agenda item to consider the contract omitted the question of creating an oversight committee to explore establishing a public defender’s office in the county.
“We had Ashantu Mitchel from the state public defender’s office telling us what we needed to do,” Gonzales said. “And I truly thought, as a supervisor, we were going in that direction.”
Supervisor Mindy Sotelo supported the Damkar contract, and she too wanted to see a plan to create a public defender’s office in the county.
The supervisors couldn’t thoroughly speak about creating an oversight committee or a public defender’s office because it was not on the agenda, David Prentice, the county’s legal counsel said. The supervisors then asked county staff to add the topic to a future agenda.
Neighboring counties including Santa Clara and Santa Cruz have established public defender offices. They have a budget of $11.2 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, compared to San Benito County’s $302 million.
Santa Clara County opened its public defender office in 1965 and an alternate defender office in 1996, the county’s website states.
According to Molly O’Neal, Santa Clara County’s chief public defender, the office has over 300 staff and an $87 million budget. While Santa Clara’s office handles about 30,000 cases a year, Ashanti Mitchell, an attorney at the Indigent Defense Improvement Division with the Office of the State Public Defender, said from 2022 to 2023, the indigent defense firm, Fitzgerald, Alvarez, and Ciummo Law Firm, saw over 200 felony cases and over 800 misdemeanor cases in San Benito County.
Santa Cruz County held meetings with community stakeholders and decided to initiate a transition plan from contracted public defenders to a public defender’s office, a March 2021 staff report said.
A $13 million budget was approved by the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors to begin the transition, the report said. The office includes 62 attorneys, investigators, social works and other staff members.
There were two public comments urging San Benito supervisors to provide public defense services in-house.
Hollister resident Elia Salinas referred to Santa Clara County’s and Watsonville’s Public Defense Office as blueprints for setting up a department in San Benito County.
“It’s going to cost money, but in the long run, it’s going to cost money for a benefit that’s required,” Salinas said.
“Right now the citizens of this county are literally having their constitutional rights violated. They’re not getting the appropriate legal advice. They’re not being seen,” she said.
Resident Israel Villa, deputy director for the California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice, said among the supervisors’ responsibilities was to uphold the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“This county has extreme failures,” Villa said. “I urge you to undergo a participatory budget process with the AB 109 funding stream to ensure equitable allocations to further actualize and establish our own public defender’s office.”
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