When prosecutors want more San Diego DUI prosecuting attorneys, they get them.

Against the advice of executive staff, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved District Attorney Rod Pacheco's request to hire more prosecutors to help oversee a new case management system meant to pare down the county's backlog of criminal cases.

In a 5-0 vote, the board cleared Pacheco to increase his staff of supervising deputy district attorneys by four, at a current fiscal year cost of $289,472.

Pacheco asked for the new positions to meet increased demands placed on the D.A.'s office under a recently implemented Riverside County Superior Court case management system conceived by a working group of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and law enforcement representatives.

Under the new system, felony cases are assigned to “vertical calendar departments” and “pre-preliminary hearing conference departments,” where the focus is on the “resolution of a greater number of cases at an earlier stage in the (judicial) process,” Riverside County Presiding Judge Richard T. Fields said earlier this month.

In the western half of the county, the backlog of criminal cases awaiting trial has exceeded 1,000 since 2006, according to San Diego DUI lawyers.

“We haven't had significant changes in the court system since (the mid-1980s),” Pacheco told the board. “The working group represents an opportunity to change the manner in which we do business. It's an evolutionary step. The court system has to evolve. It's going to be a struggle to get that done.”

The county's top prosecutor said he needed experienced trial lawyers to supervise the vertical and pre-preliminary courtrooms and would have to re-assign senior deputy district attorneys involved in murder and gang prosecutions if his request was not granted.

“Even with four additional SSDAs, our management resources will still be stretched to their maximum capacity,” Pacheco said.

Riverside County Chief Executive Officer Larry Parrish forwarded a letter to the board members, urging them to hold off on approving any new positions as a matter of good financial housekeeping.

“It is our practice to recommend that off-budget requests such as this be referred to the (June) budget hearings,” Parrish wrote. “We appreciate that the District Attorney has indicated that he can temporarily shift positions to support this program. This will allow the board to consider this request among other general fund priorities.”

But Supervisor Jeff Stone pointed out the board's recent approval of increased funds for the Public Defender's Office and said the county should be “consistent in giving the resources necessary.”

“I don't want this to be at the expense of prosecuting murders or at the expense of prosecuting gangs,” Stone said.

Supervisor Marion Ashley described the court's new case management system as a “breath of fresh air.”

“We should support your efforts,” Ashley told Pacheco. “We have to make this system work. We've suffered with this backlog of cases for too long.”

Pacheco said he was “guardedly optimistic” that more criminal cases would be cleared in reasonable time instead of being “pushed to the back end of the dispositional process.” But he warned the new system had already experienced “hiccups” and a lack of cooperation on the part of one judge.

“The best system devised by man can never work if people don't believe in it and don't exercise self-discipline,” he said.

California Fourth District Court of Appeals Judge Richard D. Huffman, who headed the working group, wrote a letter in support of Pacheco's request, citing the benefits of a case management system built on universal cooperation.

“Earlier resolution of cases should reduce the number of court appearances and should also reduce the time defendants spend in the county jail as pretrial detainees,” the judge wrote. “Reduction in the number of appearances and the length of pretrial delay should reduce the overall per-case cost for criminal cases.”

San Diego DUI defense attorneys deal with these issues regularly.