SD Rostra thanks City Attorney Jan Goldsmith for this response to Judge Larry Stirling’s post on criminal prosecutions within the City of San Diego. Rostra readers are fortunate to hear this high-level discussion from two distinguished and productive leaders in civil and criminal law.
Here is Mr. Goldsmith’s commentary:
Merger of the criminal functions is not practicable. The DA’s office doesn’t have the ability to handle the 40,000 criminal cases that we now handle annually.
The inefficiency arose out of two offices working separately without coordination. With better coordination, it would be fine. Even the DA’s office has misdemeanor and felony divisions in matters outside of the City of San Diego, but the DA’s office misdemeanor and felony divisions
coordinate case management.
Bonnie Dumanis and I discussed this issue before I took office. In fact, during the 2008 election campaign we announced publicly a plan to better coodinate the offices. Guess what? We did what we said we would do.
Here’s what we did:
1. One of Bonnies’ top deputies, David Greenberg, joined our office in December, 2008, on loan for one year to lead our Criminal Division and conform it’s policies and practices with the DA’s office. He returned to the DA’s office in December, 2009, having done an extraordinary job.
2. Under David’s leadership, issuing guidelines and training were conformed with the DA’s office (that is a big deal). A strong working relationship was established. The relationship is ingrained in the office culture in a number of ways:
A. We now share the identical computer case management system. Our Criminal Division is hooked by computer to the DA’s office;
B. We have cross-deputized deputies;
C. DA’s are authorized to wrap misdemeanors in felony pleas;
D. We make court appearances for each other;
E. Our deputies handle some felony probation revocations;
F. We participate in each other’s training programs;
G. Our attorneys communicate on a regular basis, something that was not done before. You might want to read a short article I wrote about this a year ago for our newsletter:
http://www.sandiego.gov/cityattorney/pdf/09fallbrief.pdf
Accordingly, much of what Larry Stirling writes is obsolete. He should have written it before December, 2008 during Mr. Aguirre’s term when the offices did not coordinate.