Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Alternate Public defenders -Monterey county

In many counties the alternate public defender is a government eployee just like the public defender; these counties maintain two (and sometimes more) separate PD offices for those cases in which representing a particular client would create a conflict of interest for the primary public defender.

In situations where the county must appoint a private attorney, it typically will have a list of lawyers who have agreed to accept cases for a given hourly rate and will select someone from that list. The county's rate usually is less than the attorney would charge a private client.

The hourly rates will vary from one county to another. Even within a given county, there may be different rates for different types of cases (for instance, the county might have to pay lawyers more to defend murder suspects than to handle other types of cases). Counties in which the cost of living varies greatly from one city to another may need to use different pay scales in different courthouses, though I don't know if any counties actually do this.