AUDIT MIXED BAG FOR DA'S OFFICE : FILINGS, TRACKING ASSAILED; CONVICTIONS LAUDED.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

A management audit released Friday criticized the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office for filing charges in a declining percentage of cases, for not effectively monitoring overall performance, and for an absence of statistics about plea bargains and case dismissals.

At the same time, the Price-Waterhouse management audit praised the office for increasing its felony jury-trial conviction rate by 6 percent over the last three years.

The audit - one of several commissioned by the Board of Supervisors to evaluate the performance of county departments - commended the District Attorney's Office overall, and said it is ``doing a good job in accomplishing its primary goal of evaluating and prosecuting cases.''

Auditors found that the office's 89 percent felony jury-trial conviction rate exceeds the national average by 11 percent. But that statistic is not a good measure of overall performance because only 10 percent of the department's felony cases are heard by juries, the auditors reported.

Also, the office does not ``systematically assess performance or identify strengths and weaknesses within the organization,'' according to the report.

In response, District Attorney Gil Garcetti highlighted the aspects of the report that praised his office and said his staff is doing a good job.

``We send approximately 2,000 people to state prison every month,'' Garcetti said.

He cited the report's findings that his office allocates fewer resources to management than any other prosecutorial agency in the state, has revamped and greatly improved training programs for prosecutors and staff, and has a ``dynamic management staff which is continually considering alternative strategies and approaches to prosecution.''

Garcetti admitted that some of the auditors' findings were a surprise, including a complaint from prosecutors that police officers fail to show up 20 percent of the time to testify in preliminary hearings.

``It seems to me to be a high no-show rate,'' he said.

Auditors wrote that some cases were dismissed because police officers or witnesses were absent. Garcetti said he will meet with commanding officers at local law enforcement agencies to see how the situation can be improved.

As for the report's complaint that his office has not effectively monitored overall performance, Garcetti said the 89 percent felony-trial conviction rate and an equally high rate of guilty pleas on settlements show that prosecutors are doing a good job.

Auditors noted, however, that the jury-trial conviction rate does not take into account the large number of hung juries, which were the result in 16 percent of the felony jury-trial cases.

Auditors also said they were frustrated by a lack of centralized information about case dismissals and plea bargains, which are the disposition of most of the cases filed by the office.

Garcetti said the head deputies at each branch office track those numbers for him and auditors could have obtained countywide totals by calling each branch office. He said he hopes to put together an automated system to compile those figures, but for now he gets the data from each head deputy.

The auditors said the unavailability of such data is a particular cause for concern among prosecutors and police.

``Some local law enforcement officials also voiced concerns regarding the quantity and quality of settlements,'' the auditors wrote. ``Because (the district attorney) does not currently issue a management report detailing settlements, including actual disposition, it is difficult to truly measure (the department's) effectiveness.''

The audit criticized the office for filing cases on only 74 percent of the referrals it receives from local police departments. That's less than the 80 percent filing rate of the office in 1992 and less than the national average, also 80 percent.

Nine branch offices of the District Attorney's Office, including Van Nuys, had filing rates under 70 percent.

``A prosecutor's office with a high conviction rate but a relatively low filing rate may be rejecting all but the most `convictable' defendants given the evidence,'' the auditors wrote.

Garcetti said the rate of filings has nothing to do with prosecutors shying away from hard-to-prosecute cases, since many difficult cases are assigned to specialized units such as the sexual assault division or the hard-core gang unit.

He acknowledged that the number of hung juries has ``gone up slightly,'' but pointed out that many of those defendants agree to a plea bargain rather than face a second trial. He said his office has an 80 percent conviction rate on retrials after a hung jury.