In one case, a director attempted to force a private attorney to serve at trial against their will.
OAKLAND — As the county’s superior court system began to reopen after nearly two years of COVID-caused slowdowns, the Alameda County Bar Association reported a shortage of qualified attorneys that got so bad a director tried to force a private lawyer to serve at a trial against his will.
The CAAP program is in place to assist criminal court defendants who cannot afford a lawyer but also can’t be represented by the public defender’s office, due to conflicts of interest. The Alameda County Public Defender’s office declares conflicts hundreds and sometimes thousands of times a year, forcing attorneys on the CAAP roster to take over.
When a public defender conflicts out of a case, it can be for any number of reasons, including having an overburdened caseload or the case involving someone — a witness, victim, or co-defendant, for example — who is represented by the public defender’s office. “We are not sure whether this is due to an increase in crime, an increase in arrests, an increase in the cases where life is charged, or an increase in referring practices by the public defender,” Chambers said. She added: “COVID has led to many criminal trials being postponed . This has meant that our current attorneys had some down time, perhaps, initially, but now are jammed, with cases that all need to go to trial soon.
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