District attorneys seek increase in funds

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.

They say their biggest challenge is retaining experienced prosecutors to try complex homicide, rape, and child abuse cases, whereas experienced private lawyers often take those cases as ''bar advocates," and are paid an hourly rate by the state for those cases.

''Are there cases that slip through the cracks and result in not guiltys because of this problem? Yes there are," O'Keefe said. ''Sooner or later there's bound to be situations where somebody is acquitted who perhaps shouldn't be as a result of that."

The district attorneys, in a meeting this week with editors and reporters from The Boston Globe, were reacting to the House budget, released this month.

The budget called for what the district attorneys describe as a 2 percent increase in spending for all counties except Hampden. They say their offices have struggled since 2001, when state budget cutbacks resulted in limited appropriations for their offices for several years.

They are calling for a 10 percent increase in operational spending.

Some prosecutors have suggested that because defense lawyers hold key positions in the House, members may tend to be more sympathetic to the defense bar.

The House budget for the district attorneys for fiscal 2007, which begins July 1, totals $82.5 million, according to their analysis. Spending on defense counsel totals $114.5 million.

''Unless we know what the rationale is" for the budget disparity, Coakley said, ''we need to raise it."

James Eisenberg, chief of staff for Robert A. DeLeo, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a Winthrop Democrat, rejected the complaints.

He noted that the budget contains a 4 percent salary increase for assistant district attorneys and staff public defenders.

''It is disingenuous to say that in any way the House of Representatives is favoring public defenders or private bar advocates over prosecutors," Eisenberg said.

Anthony Benedetti, general counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, said that while he thinks both prosecutors and public defenders are underpaid, it is impossible to compare budgets. This, he said, is because prosecutors have inherent advantages, including their access to state and federal grant and drug forfeiture money, which the indigent defense bar does not receive.

''The DAs use the state police and the local police to do some of their investigation," Benedetti said. ''You can't compare the two."

He also said the $114.5 million appropriated for defense counsel includes some funds for civil work.

Benedetti said the budget increase for defense counsel is primarily the result of a new pay scale for bar advocates, who won their biggest pay raise in more than 20 years last year.

The old pay so outraged bar advocates that they organized a stoppage, leading to clogged courts and the release of some defendants for lack of representation.

A commission appointed by the governor and Legislature in 2004 to research bar advocates' pay found that hourly pay rates in Massachusetts were among the country's lowest.

At the heart of the dispute, it appears, is the district attorneys' objection to the state's heavy reliance on the private attorneys who work as bar advocates.

The district attorneys expressed solidarity with public defenders, saying the government lawyers face similar challenges to assistant district attorneys.

But they say the bulk of defense work in this state is now performed by the prviate attorneys, and most of the money for defense counsel is paid to them. In 2004, more than 2,500 bar advocates handled 182,528 assignments, while about 100 full-time CPCS staff lawyers handled 9,200 cases.

Often, the private attorneys are far more experienced than the young prosecutors.

''I liken our CPCS staff lawyers to our ADAs. They're dedicated professionals who work extremely hard," O'Keefe said.

''I wonder why there aren't more of them versus bar advocates whom we are paying, in my humble judgment, an inordinate amount of money to do what a CPCS staff lawyer would do much more efficiently and, I suggest, with a more just result."

Entry-level prosecutors and public defenders make approximately the same salary of $35,000.

After five years on the job, both groups typically get wages of $40,000.

Edward P. Leibensperger, the president of the Boston Bar Association, said it's unproductive to compare the two sides' budgets because of the private attorneys' costs of running their offices and other systematic differences.

Emily Sweeney contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com