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Massachusetts district attorneys say they are being deprived of the money they need to run their operations, and are sometimes losing cases because they cannot retain experienced prosecutors at low state salaries.
The district attorneys have launched a campaign to persuade legislators to boost their budget and to correct what they say is a disparity between the resources they receive, and those given to defense lawyers for the indigent.
''I don't think the public wants a system that's more weighted to defending murderers, rapists, and child abusers than it is toward prosecuting them," said the Suffolk County district attorney, Daniel F.
Conley. ''The public safety is going to suffer unless and until the Legislature takes a totally different view of how we fund prosecutors' offices."
The Middlesex County district attorney, Martha Coakley, and the Cape and Islands district attorney, Michael O'Keefe, said their offices have lost cases because of a reliance on inexperienced prosecutors.
When meth users find themselves under arrest and in the judicial system, they generally come in contact with the public defender's office. According to Assistant Public Defender Cannon Stevens and District Defender Linda Burson, the very issues that lead the methamphetamine user to be in need of legal defense are the reasons for which they are some of the most difficult clients to represent.
When these difficulties are combined with the heavy case loads the office faces, the toll methamphetamine takes on the public defender's office and its personnel turns out to be huge.
The two said there are a variety of reasons why methamphetamine addicts are troublesome clients. Besides the obvious problems of irritability and paranoia, there are issues of mental instability, which lead them to miss appointments and to lie about their drug use when they do show up.
"Tweakers are the worst for appointments," said Stevens.
"They are the most difficult clients to deal with. They don't trust us."
TAMPA - On just about every floor of the courthouse, people were talking about the young man representing himself against a murder charge.
Prosecutors, public defenders, bailiffs assigned to other courtrooms and court personnel filtered in and out of courtroom 24 to watch Michael Glenn in action.
Often, it wasn't pretty.
Glenn, 24, constantly repeated vague questions for witnesses to answer over and over.
The repeats brought objections from prosecutors and repeated admonitions from Judge Wayne Timmerman.
Late afternoon Thursday, Timmerman prohibited Glenn from asking a question a third time. Glenn's frustration began to show.
"What question do you want me to ask, man," he said.
Timmerman nearly stood up in his chair.
"Man?
" he yelled. "You will not refer to this court as 'man!'"
As the day drew to a close, Timmerman asked Glenn whether he had any more witnesses to call.
"Just myself," he said.
Timmerman said Glenn will take the stand first thing this morning.
Assistant Public Defender John Skye, who sat in the courtroom to watch, lamented that he had another hearing and would not be present to hear Glenn's testimony.
SPRINGFIELD - A public defender is calling on the state to shut down its Internet-based registry of convicted sex offenders until safeguards are in place to prevent harassment and vigilantism.
Andrew M. Klyman of the Springfield office of the Committee for Public Counsel Services said Tuesday the killing of two men in Maine by a man who apparently tracked them down using state's online directory of sexual offenders should cause the Massachusetts Sexual Offender Registry Board to reconsider its own Web site.
"It is a legitimate concern," he said.
"At the very least, the state should shut it down until additional safeguards are put in place," Klyman said.
Maine's online registry was taken down after two people listed on it - Joseph L.
Gray, 57, and William Elliott, 24 - were shot and killed over the weekend. The suspect, Stephen Marshall of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, died Sunday after shooting himself on a bus entering Boston.
Massachusetts Sexual Offender Registry Board spokesman Charles McDonald said there are no plans to discontinue or redesign the site, which has between 2,000 and 7,000 viewers daily.
"Everything is up and operational," he said.
The Public Defender s Office represents people in criminal cases who cannot afford a lawyer; the Legal Aid Bureau provides attorneys for civil cases.
In the past, the two agencies seldom worked together.
Under the pilot program, if a public defender learns that a criminal defendant also faces eviction or a child custody issue, the client will be referred to the Legal Aid Bureau.
While it may seem a small step, the county s chief public defender and Legal Aid Bureau attorneys praised the pilot program.
The local public defender, whose office has been criticized as too expensive, asked Hall County officials Tuesday to separate his budget from other indigent defense costs to more clearly account for expenses.
The Hall County Board of Commissioners, administration and finance officials will end budget hearings today for fiscal year 2007, which begins July 1.
All departments and agencies presented the panel with requests, which must be cut from $85.9 to $80.
3 million to balance the budget.
The public defender's office began working in January 2005. Designed to mirror the district attorney, the public defender and staff represent offenders in court who cannot afford an attorney.
The office replaced an old system where judges appointed attorneys from an indigent defense panel.
Public Defender Brad Morris, who serves the Northeastern Judicial Circuit that also includes Dawson County, is asking Hall for another attorney and assistant. Still, his office's 2007 budget would decrease from $1.
4 to $1.2 million due to reduced startup costs.
The public defender's budget, however, is lumped with the county's rising indigent defense expenses, which Morris said makes his office look bad.
"The problem I have with it is when ...
we hear that our budget is $2.1 million, when that isn't in our budget," Morris said.
A from Indiana reveals severe short comings in the juvenile justice system.
Overworked public defenders who lack sufficient training and motivation are among the findings. Many children go without representation or at best perfunctory representation in court. For special education students the findings of the report are especially troubling.
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