Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: court appointed attorney

Your appointed lawyer has an obligation to be competent to handle your case. The responsibility to make sure he is competent is his and not the court's. If a deputy public defender isn't sufficiently experienced, someone else from the PD's office should take over the case.

It's hard to imagine an appellate court finding that appointed defense counsel was not acting in the defendant's interest. Appellate courts don't make findings of fact. Further, if your case went up on appeal the court would be looking at the allegations against you and not your grievances against your lawyer. And even if the Court of Appeal were to somehow decide your lawyer had breached his duties to you, that finding would probably relate only to the individual lawyer and not to the public defender's entire office.