Absentee Defender Takes on His Critics : Law: Holder of lucrative O.C. contract says he doesn’t have to be in court to do right by poor.

Suntanned and immaculately coiffed, Hermes necktie knotted tightly to a stiff collar, William Walton Stewart is sitting in his spacious conference room feeling bewildered and more than a little betrayed.

After all, this is Don Guillermo-- as he is known to some in the Orange County courthouse--the man who has managed to hold onto the county’s contract to defend poor people accused of crimes, while running an import-export business from Bogota, Colombia.

For 15 years, he’s been a player in Orange County’s close-knit legal club, making all the right moves to keep the pact that pays his firm nearly $1 million annually.

He has spent years cultivating relationships with state lawmakers, local judges and county supervisors; has raised funds for all the right war chests; his expensive slip-ons have even walked precincts.

So what if he hasn’t spent much time in the courtroom the past few years? Stewart says his associates have kept the cases rolling and have done a capable job defending their clients. And if Stewart has been busy with outside ventures--selling lobsters, flowers and fruit imported from Colombia, and lately marketing a brand of waterproof asphalt in Las Vegas--why should anyone care?

And why, Stewart asks, are a handful of judges and county bureaucrats suddenly turning up the heat and talking about taking away his contract?

“Idiots” is how he once described his critics on the bench. (He now offers a public apology to the judges for his “no-class” statement.)

“You see, people have been taking shots at me for a long time,” Stewart said, his golden hair glowing in the dim light of the dark-paneled conference room. “Because of my connections in Colombia, people have even accused me of dealing cocaine. I don’t understand it.

“I’ve never perceived myself as an (expletive), but I think people are a little upset because they would like to have what I have. You see, I could bury people in this county, but who’s got time to play those games?”

Stewart’s handling of the county’s biggest criminal defense contract has come under fire in recent weeks, as the county grappled with how to cut the costs of providing attorneys for criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire their own.

Two judges on a special committee which oversees the contract system recently accused Stewart of farming out much of the caseload to lawyers outside his firm, while retaining a cut from the county contract.

Wednesday, Stewart faces perhaps his greatest political challenge when Central Court judges--concerned that his law firm’s failure to have enough attorneys to cover scheduled court hearings is slowing down the criminal justice process--will discuss whether to put the contract out for bids.

Their discussions could result in Stewart losing the lucrative county contract, but few--certainly not Stewart--are prepared to count him out just yet.

“Even if I wanted to get out of this contract, I wouldn’t get out now,” the Pennsylvania native proclaimed, “not while all this stuff is going on, no way.”

Local judges and attorneys familiar with Stewart’s manner say such rhetoric is part of the man’s public persona--a man who is used to getting what he wants and is accustomed to using whatever influence is needed to close the deal.

“If you’re asking whether he has been kissing up to the right people for a long time and making the right financial contributions to the right people, I would say he has,” said attorney Heidi Mueller, who in 1979 appeared before the Board of Supervisors to oppose Stewart’s first bid for the contract and would like to compete for the contact should it go out for bid.

“He knows how to schmooze. He’s never had the reputation of a trial attorney,” she said. “He’s a good businessman. And unfortunately, I see our profession moving in that direction. You have to remember that we’re talking about (legal representation for) poor people here. But you might as well be selling shoes.”

Said another attorney familiar with Stewart’s work: “I can’t think of another attorney in this county who would refer to two sitting judges as ‘idiots.’ That’s contempt!”

Stewart responds by saying that, in fact, defending poor people accused of crimes could not be further from his other business interests. “By and large, the people who are bad-mouthing me are the people who are going to be doing this (criminal law) . . . for the rest of their lives. I’m not.”

First, there is his import-export operation in Colombia. A $50,000 investment got Stewart started flying lobsters to Miami and New York three years ago. Pretty soon, he was into flowers, then fruit pulp, and soon after that, Stewart was negotiating a deal to import Marlboro cigarettes into Russia. The cigarette deal, Stewart said, fell apart when President Mikhail Gorbachev was ousted.

This can’t be real, you say? Stewart spreads the contracts and multinational correspondence across the conference table.

“Pretty wild, huh?” he asks.

And wild doesn’t begin to describe his encounter, says he, with notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Stewart and friends were enjoying a night of dancing at a local disco on Bogota’s North Side when a public address announcement invited everyone to stay for complimentary food and drinks. The conditions: No one uses the telephone and no one leaves until 6 a.m.

“Pretty soon, (Escobar) walks in with an entourage of about 100 guys, all carrying semiautomatic weapons,” Stewart recalls as if it were last week. “The body guards were handing out gold Rolexes to the women. They picked up the tab for everything. Dom Perignon, anything you wanted. Those were the good old days.”

These days, he’s already counting the millions to be made distributing a waterproof asphalt called Dermasphalt from a new corporate headquarters in Las Vegas.

But even with all the talk about his million-dollar ventures, there are curious other aspects to Stewart’s financial profile.

The very building which houses his law firm on Broadway in Santa Ana, one of the properties held by his real-estate company, is part of a pending bankruptcy action.

In another matter, Stewart owes about $90,000 to Wells Fargo Bank for defaulting on a credit account--a matter, the attorney said, that should be resolved shortly.

He also is embroiled in a particularly nasty $12-million lawsuit against the Bank of Caldas in Colombia. Two years ago, Stewart said, the bank agreed to loan him $1 million against an interest in his law office property, but the bank allegedly paid out only $230,000. The dispute has led the bank to file a countersuit, which required him to appear in a Colombian court.

Stewart said the summons was sent to the wrong address in Colombia. When he did not appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He said the threatened arrest is merely an attempt to get him to drop the lawsuit.

But Stewart’s financial woes are side issues to the criticism that he virtually absented himself from the courtroom, while retaining some of the indigent-defense contract’s proceeds for his services as an administrator.

Stewart defends his handling of the contract, saying his firm has performed ably enough over the years and deserves serious consideration in any future plans for indigent-defense assignments.

He readily admits that the daily trench warfare of defending the poor isn’t exactly his style. That’s why he hired an office of attorneys and refers many contract cases out to about a half-dozen others for a cut of the profits.

Municipal Court Judges Margaret Anderson and Pamela L. Iles, the “idiots” Stewart spoke of, said the system of “subletting” cases blurs the lines of responsibility for the contract.

“When you give a contract like this to somebody,” Anderson said recently, “you expect that person to show up in court, working the cases. People say he hasn’t been in court for years on one of these cases.”

About four years sounds right to Stewart. But his absence--while peculiar to judges and attorneys who hold contracts in other courts--is part of Stewart’s corporate style.

“My strengths are in delegation and administration,” Stewart said. “If the contract required me to be in court, I’d be there. But it doesn’t. .

The rainmaker, in this case, is Don Guillermo , and the cases of indigent defendants have been pouring into his firm since 1979, all compliments of the county.

In the past three years, the county has paid out more than $2 million to Stewart’s firm. And before that, Stewart says, the contract paid even more because of a higher volume of cases.

“I’ve been good to the county, and the county has been good to me,” he said.

Anderson, Iles and some county officials believe the county may have been too good to the attorney.

“It’s skimming is what it is,” Anderson said recently.

Stewart views the recent criticisms as part of a broader effort by Anderson and Isles to defend the public defender’s office from increasing calls for privatization.

County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton has encouraged such outside contracting as a way to cut local government costs. At Stanton’s prodding, the privatization movement has picked up momentum this year.

And that has not set well with Anderson and Iles.

“Pretty soon it’s going to sound like an Earl Scheib operation around here,” Iles said recently. “ ‘I’ll defend that man for $29.95.’ It’s not a question of what kind of defense you are providing. It’s becoming a question of how low you can go.”

Stewart sees himself as a convenient whipping boy for the judges’ fury but says that he harbors no plans for a coup against the public defender’s office.

“Could the public defender’s office be privatized? Yes. Could I do it? Yes. Would I do it? No. I don’t think it would be appropriate to dismantle the office.

“I’m not saying we can put on an O.J. Simpson-type of defense for anyone,” he said. “But we’ve never been accused of short-cutting anybody.”

Several central Orange County Municipal Court judges said, however, they have experienced court delays when Stewart’s attorneys have not been on time, or available when needed to handle a case. Still other judges defended Stewart, citing the burdens facing attorneys who are juggling heavy caseloads. Last year, court officials said, Stewart’s firm handled more than 1,200 cases.

“Judges always want instant service and that is not always possible,” said Judge Gary Ryan, recently elected to the Superior Court bench. “Over the years, I’d say they’ve been better at some times and worse at other times.”

Stewart says his firm has always tried to accommodate the courts and will continue to do so even while his contract appears to be in limbo.

“I would like to have some more lawyers in Central Court. If I really wanted to make some more money, I would take the experienced guys out and put more inexperienced people there.” Stewart said he wouldn’t really consider doing such a thing.

But why then would a man with seemingly more million-dollar deals in the making want to continue taking the punishment he has absorbed in recent weeks?

“I want to keep my presence here in Orange County,” he said.

And within his far-flung business empire, where does he rank the interests of poor defendants? Without hesitation, Don Guillermo responds: “Right up there with Dermasphalt.”