D.A. Asks Board to Review Law on Defendants’ Aid : Courts: A businessman’s fraud case raises the issue of whether wealthy suspects should help pay their legal costs.
Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury asked Ventura County supervisors Thursday to explore a change in state law allowing defendants who hold high-paying jobs--but who have been declared indigent--to be charged for part of their legal bills.
Bradbury, in a letter to the Board of Supervisors, said the fraud case of Thousand Oaks businessman Olen B. Phillips has again raised the issue of whether affluent defendants should pay a share of defense costs as their cases progress to trial.
Phillips and Charles J. Francoeur, principal defendants in the largest fraud case in county history, hold high-paying jobs and own expensive homes. But a judge awarded the men public-paid lawyers in March after a county investigation found that they could not afford private attorneys.
Phillips, a former real estate financier, and Francoeur, an executive in the same firm, are charged with 81 counts of grand theft and securities fraud. The trial could last six months, attorneys say.
Court officials, citing the complexity of the case, have asked county supervisors to hire a team of accountants for $350,000 and investigators for $35,000 so the two men can have a proper defense. The issue will be considered Tuesday.
Bradbury declared the requests exorbitant in his letter to the board Thursday.
Phillips, an airline pilot, “makes about $150,000 per year,†Bradbury said, “lives in a home in Westlake valued at over $1 million, has a retirement account of over $335,000, has his own personal airplane and drives a Mercedes Benz.â€
Under current law, the county apparently cannot attempt to recover any of Phillips’ legal costs until his case has been decided, and that may be too late, Bradbury said.
Defendants with apparent assets--such as Phillips--should be forced to contribute to their defense while they are still on the job, Bradbury said. Now the county tries to collect from defendants after trial, which usually leaves them convicts and truly indigent, he said.
County Public Defender Kenneth Clayman said he does not object to Bradbury’s proposal if defendants can afford to pay. “You ought to pay if you can,†Clayman said.
But William Maxwell, the attorney hired to defend Francoeur, said Bradbury is apparently working under the assumption that defendants are guilty.
“Mr. Bradbury and a lot of people generally ignore the possibility that maybe these people are innocent,†Maxwell said. “Would you want to lose everything you own to an embezzlement charge that might turn out to be unfounded? If a person is not guilty, should he have to pay anything for that?â€
Maxwell said Bradbury has forced the county to spend a lot of money by indicting Phillips and Francoeur on 81 counts.
A third defendant, Felix Laumann, who worked at Phillips’ Thousand Oaks real estate investment firm, was indicted on 27 counts. He is represented by the public defender’s office.
The three men were indicted in February on charges that they bilked 21 people out of more than $3 million. Investigators have said that about 2,000 investors may have lost more than $30 million in deals handled by Phillips’ companies.
Maxwell said that the maximum sentence on the charges is 10 years, whether the defendants are prosecuted on seven counts or 70, and that Bradbury filed so many to “make a big splash†in the news media.
The sheer size and complexity of the case apparently scared away all private attorneys, said Maxwell and Clayman.
Other county officials also said in interviews that the district attorney was making the Phillips case unnecessarily expensive.
“Remember,†said Sheila Gonzalez, executive director of the county courts system, “the (Charles) Keating case, the largest savings and loan fraud case, has 10 counts on it. This case has 81. And for every charge comes a price tag.â€
County analyst Kathy McCann, who investigated defense requests for the extra $385,000 in the Phillips case, said the accounting and investigation are necessary because the case is so broad.
Bradbury said he needed to file the 81 counts because major fraud cases “are like jigsaw puzzles that would not be comprehensible to a jury with only some pieces of the puzzle. . . . Substantially the same proof would be necessary whether a few or all possible counts were charged.â€
Bradbury also questioned Thursday whether the county should spend an extra $385,000 in public funds.
Government accountants spent just 500 hours investigating their case against Phillips and Francoeur--an effort that would cost no more than $50,000 if private accountants receiving $100 an hour had been hired, he said.
By comparison, county officials have asked the board to hire a five-person accounting team to work a total of 4,650 hours at $75 an hour, McCann said.
Prosecutors were stunned by the amount, calling it a blank check signed by taxpayers.
“What are they using, an abacus?†Special Assistant Dist. Atty. Donald Coleman said Thursday. “Based on our knowledge of the case . . . the amount appears to be unreasonable.â€
Bradbury’s letter went beyond the Phillips case. He questioned whether the county’s system of investigating defendants’ assets is adequate.
The Phillips case, and those of other fraud defendants and alleged drug dealers, “continue to illustrate that the problem of determining which defendants are indigent and in need of taxpayers’ support has not been sufficiently addressed,†he said.
Generally, defendants are declared indigent after swearing that they cannot afford an attorney and listing their assets, Clayman said.
The statements are rarely investigated because there is no money for inquiries, the public defender said.
But with Phillips and Francoeur, Clayman asked the county courts system for a financial evaluation. That investigation consisted of reviewing credit reports, bank accounts and a list of assets that the defendants provided, said county courts official Vince Ordonez.
There was no inquiry to see if the men had assets that they had not listed, he said.
“We determined that they did not have the means to pay for a private attorney for the length of the case,†Ordonez said.
Defendants are not required to sell assets--such as houses, planes or cars--to help pay their legal bills, unless a court orders such action after trial, he said.
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