A justice advocacy group said it will sue the private firm that acts as public defender in Placer County. One of its members also said he will sue the partnership for millions of dollars for inadequates services.

The Sacramento-based Justice Reform Coalition accused Richard A. Ciummo & Associates of misconduct, including fraud, ineffectual counsel, failure to investigate, and collusion with the county District Attorney’s Office. The charges also implicate sheriffs, judges and county supervisors. Ciummo & Associates has denied the charges.

The coalition hopes to involve a grand jury and federal probe.

“This has been going on a long time and it’s only gotten worse,” Justice Reform Coalition executive director Rev. Ashiya Odeye said. “As times got more sophisticated, they got more sophisticated in the way they break the law.”

Placer pays Ciummo a flat fee of $4.4 million per year, according to county records.

Odeye said the Madera-based firm skimps on services to increase its profit margin. Based on 50 to 60 cases of what it considers malpractice, the coalition called Ciummo a low-end firm that disproportionately hurts the “poor” and “indigent” who rely on public defense.

“If you don’t have money, you don’t get defense and you don’t get justice, it’s as simple as that,” said Odeye, whose group staged a protest with 30 supporters outside the Placer County courts in Roseville on Aug. 26.

Representatives from Ciummo say the firm not only vehemently denies the claims, but goes beyond the call of duty to serve its clients. He said the partnership assigns 27 attorneys, two contract attorneys, six investigators, and six-and-a-half clerks to Placer County. Its contract requires 26 attorneys, two contract attorneys, five investigators, and five clerks.

“If we’re so interested in profit, why are we providing more than the contract requires?” said John Richter, a chief defense attorney in the office.

Richter described the Justice Reform Coalition as a marginalized group of former clients who are unhappy with their verdicts and who do not reflect the more than 30,000 people the firm has represented.

“They’re looking to blame someone else and not take responsibility,” Richter said, adding he kept a file of thank-you notes from satisfied defendants. “There are way more of them (satisfied defendants) than a handful of malcontents.”

Odeye would not say how many members belong to the Justice Reform Coalition, but noted it’s a coalition of 19 subgroups.

Jonathan Lancaster, who helped organize the protest, said he’ll sue Ciummo on his own.

Last year he was sentenced to 360 days in jail and a four-year suspended state prison term for stalking and repeatedly violating a restraining order filed by his neighbor in Olympic Valley. He and Mark Vierra clashed over the latter’s snowplow business, which Lancaster considered a disturbance.

He alleged Ciummo initially assigned him an inexperienced attorney and didn’t do enough to invalidate the restraining order.

“I didn’t have any input into their trial strategy,” Lancaster said. “Is that fair?”

In a later e-mail, Richter called this a “bald-faced lie” because his firm argued twice, without success, to undo the order.

Lancaster also complained that Ciummo pushes for plea bargains because they are cheaper than going to trial, which Richter also denied.

Ciummo’s group has been the county’s public defense for four years, while the Justice Reform Coalition formed five years ago.

The coalition leader labeled Ciummo the “Wal-Mart of legal defense for the poor,” echoing the moniker given in a state report from April 2008. The now-defunct California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice wrote in its report that Ciummo wins contracts by “generating volume and cutting costs in ways his government-based counterparts can’t and many private-sector competitors won’t.”

Ciummo is also the public defender in six other California counties.

Odeye said his organization runs on donations and members’ out-of-pocket contributions. It also gets financial backing from his Rastafarian church, the Order of Olufunmi, in Sacramento.

Lien Hoang can be reached at lienh@goldcountrymedia.com.