sorry, 2012, 76%. but you definitely see that there is an increase in the number of cases that are being tried. and the question, you know, is why? what is different? well, i think you have to look at the outcomes in these cases. all right? what we saw on the previous slide is that in previous years the district attorney tried fewer cases than they are trying now. but if you look at outcomes in these cases, in 2009, for example. we won 90% of all domestic violence trials and what this means because these are juries deciding the cases after a full presentation of evidence that innocent people are being tried for domestic violence cases. so

san francisco juries, this doesn't count people who plead guilty or entered other [stkpao-upbgsz/] verdicts. in 2011, 46%, and in 2012, 54%. you look at the number of hung juries and guilty verdicts, in 2011, only two guilty verdicts -- what does that mean? again i would argue that it means that the district attorney needs to do a better job of screening which case goes to trial. in most counties, the conviction rate is like 90%, 95%, santa clara county it's something like 98%. in san francisco the reason why we're -- i think we're expending resource where's we don't need to, because we're trying cases that don't need to

be tried. these are cases where san francisco juris have heard all the evidence and have said not guilty. again, i think that if these cases were reviewed more carefully, in terms of what the provability is and i think the problem says that the district attorney says we're insisting on a jury trial and not to play tit for tat, because i don't think we're here for that, but the district attorney's office has been much more aggressive on going to trial in cases it can't prove. let me give you an example. these are you will at all the trials that we tried in my office for the past four years.

in 2009 we tried 187 regular felony cases. and then we tried 10 domestic violence cases. then you see a bump up. and that is coincidentally when the new district attorney came in is in 2011-2012. so you see a huge jump in the number of cases. 207 cases in 2011, 247 cases in 2012 and then you also see an increase in the domestic violence cases that are being tried. what that means again there are more cases that are being tried, but is this a trend that doesn't only involve domestic violence cases. it involves all cases and that is because the district attorney has taken a much more aggressive stance, which he is entitled to do. i mean he makes the charging decisions and we can only

defend. the district attorney decides what cases to dismiss, we don't decide that. if they decide to dismiss a case, it's no longer tried. in our case, if our client wants to go to trial, the case proceeds to trial. it's because there are more cases being tried, i would argue with changes in the district attorney's policy, because if you compare our former district attorney, those stats would now -- i mean it's marked. when you are talking about an increase of 50% of trials, that is significant. so i think that whatever your decision is, it should be made on the facts and again, i would argue in a regular trial, in felonies, we had a 55% not guilty rate.

in misdemeanors it was 60% not guilty and these just regular cases. these are the cases in the blue. so i would argue that it would be wise to look at why there are so many people being acquitted. why there is this increase in jury trials and whether or not the answer is to throw more attorneys at the problem or to look at how we can more effectively and efficiently use our resources in these difficult and challenging times? >> thank you to the public defender for being here and i think a lot of your comments obviously are a fun pre-cursor of what is to come down budget season. one question and i will ask the district attorney, to give the district attorney an opportunity to come back and essentially answer these questions or discuss them further. and i think we'll have to do

some more diging in terms of these numbers and staffing levels and so forth, but the notion of "court appearances." just so i understand it right, it's a truism that every time the district attorney appears in court, it doesn't mean that the public defender will appear in court because there are other defense attorneys, correct? >> that is correct. >> but every. >> on the [phra-eurpblts/] of cases the way it's staffed. one courtroom or one department, there is one district attorney assigned and sometimes one public defender. >

>> so none of those things are calculated -- let me give you another example. i'm murder case scheduled to go to trial in two weeks. the case i handled, i have made maybe eight or nine court appearances on that case and obviously once the case goes to trial i will be in court for about a month. that is indistinguishable under the district attorney's algorithm. you can't extrapolate that have i only 52% of the workload because the court events are more or less. i mean, i swear i have never heard of court events being used. when i talk to the people at the court management system, i asked them the same thing and apparently it was a practice that was started by --

>> going forward, every time you are in trial the district attorney is with you. i assume there might be slightvarianations, variations, but the complexities are the same? >> when you say the complexity of the case that the district attorney front-loads more than we do. when we went through this with the controller, they wanted to make sure our caseloads reflected the work that we are actually doing. they held focus groups and figured out by survey how many hours -- they actually had us keep time sheets for about two months and they figured out the

standard amount of time that is required for the standard deviation and figure out the president bush number. if you are handling 20 level 1 cases and 10 level 2 cases and two homicide cases you will be overloaded. so it's just a very commonsense way model. i would be happy to share what the controller did for us with the district attorney. that is why i am here. i told the district attorney that the reason i fell compelled to be here is because he is extrapolating what our caseloads are. he is saying well the public defender's office is overstaffed and therefore, they don't need as much staff as they have, but we need more staff. again, i don't want to get into the back and forth.

i'm not here for that, but i'm concerned when there are really inaccurate statements being made when we have the science to to prove it. >> when you are in case with the d.a. and say the complexity is the same, maybe variance on both sides sometimes. but similarly, couldn't you say you are already saying that when a district attorney is in court without you there, those are court events, but a lot of times -- i don't want to paraphase, but someone dismissive they could be minor events. but on the flipside, couldn't they be major events when you are not defending them and for the events that you are not there and the district attorney is there, you would be able to extrapolate one way or another and maybe we could talk about how to do it an average of time spent or how serious those masters matters are? is that correct? >> if we say that you as supervisors only get time for

in chambers and that is all. we would not accurately gauge your workload. so the only way to determine the actual numbers of hours worked on a case is to look at the number of hours that it takes to work on the case and not by looking at simply how many times you showed up to court on a case? and the reality is that just because you show up in court on a case 20 times doesn't mean that you worked 20 times as hard as the person who showed up one day. i'm just saying it's not an accurate way to predict anything. what does showing up to court predict other than showing up to court? if you want it say that the district attorney 's showed up this many times and the public defenders

showed up this many times that is all it shows and nothing more. >> is it not a proxy for how many hours are spent? i mean if you show up in a homicide case ten times for the district attorney isn't that a proxy saying that we spent x number of hours? >> no, because you could spend ten court appearances going to court on a trespass and that is the problem with the system. when i talked to the court management system, they just -- they is what they said. they said using court events doesn't distinguish between all the different types of cases that the department handles. and everybody knows, like, for example in our case system, we have 250 hours a year allocated for a murder case. for a drug case, we have like 20 hours allocated. why? because a drug case doesn't require the kind of preparation, the kind of witness investigation that is

required in a murder case. that probably should be obvious, but by looking at the number of court events, there is no way you could distinguish between a homicide case or a misdemeanor case based on the number of court appearances. >> okay. thank you. >> supervisor mar. >> chair farrell i wanted to hear d.a. gascon's responses. it seems our public defender has given us a lot of information about sometimes challenging what was presented and it's clear that your serious felonies take quite a bit more time. i also wanted to say that to our public defender that our

district attorney also says their office goes above and beyond the court events workload and handle victim witness assistance, victim compensation, witness relocation, criminal investigations and child and adult advocacy and i wonder if you could that what additional responsibilities your office handles? >> just to be clear, i am not here to tell the district attorney or suggest how he should count his workload. he is free to count his workload any way he wants if he wants to use court events, i wouldn't do it that way, but he is freeh to free to do that. all i'm saying it's wrong for him to extrapolate his court events to our court events because as far as i'm concerned, one has nothing to do with the

other. we have weighted caseloads indicated in the report and we published them online. as you can see, those levels were established by the controller's office, not by us. so you have an objective entity that based on the science figures out the number of hours you are spending on cases and plug the numbers in and that is how we arrive at the total number of cash s. >> could you respond to duties above that?

>> comparing our two practices is like apples and oranges. what is the big difference? we have clients. we have actually people that we have to meet with and that we have the obligation to communicate with and respond to their needs. the district attorney doesn't have to do that. we have to drive to san bruno county jail to meet with many of our clients. the district attorney doesn't have to do that. they meet with witnesss and crime victims burb it's a different relationship. my whole point is that you can't extrapolate by our workload by looking at this crazy thing called court events. to me it's just mind-boggling

he has done that. the d.a. has more responsibilitis and that is why his budget is nearly twice our budget and they get tons more grants. that is life. if i wanted to change that i wouldn't become a prosecutor. the bottom line is that you cannot compare our workloads to each other unless you do a case-weighted study. and if i were in your shoes and making the decision whether to spend another $2 million next year on prosecutors or defenders, you know, then i would look to see what kind of cases are these? how many hours are they going to take? because what you are going to be effectively doing is reduction the case load of prosecutors which was once 30 to 18 to probably eight or nine cases a prosecutor. and if that is what the goal is, i would approve the supplemental. but if that is not what the

goal is and you don't want attorneys with part-time caseloads working full-time, you know, i would consider at least having the data before you decide. >> okay. thank you to our public defender. at this point i think it's only fair to bring up our district attorney gascon to discuss a few of the items brought up. >> yes, first of all i want to thank the public defender for a very good presentation and i can see why the public defender has done so well for the last decade in front of this body. the reality is that court events are the only unbiased count that we have today, that we can go to see how many times a lawyer walks into the courtroom? as i indicated in my earlier presentation, there is a wide variety of court events and certainly the complexity of the events vary from case to case, but a reality i must underline

is that every time that a public defender shows up in the courtroom, there is a district attorney off and on the other side. however, every time that the district attorney is in the courtroom doesn't necessarily mean a public defender is going to be on the other side. let me illustrate for you, for instance in this chart that i have here, you can see going back to 2007. all the way to 2012. and you can see the proportionality of work done by the public defender's office in that that is done by private defense. in 2007 the public defend every was almost 68% of the workload. if you fast-forward all the way down to 2012, that workload has come down to 53%. meaning that other people are handling this work. not the public defender's office. however, in the

prosecute's side, we continue to handle the work. i also want to correct a little concerning the number of attorneys that we have assigned to our misdemeanor unit. we have nine attorneys assigned to our general misdemeanor unit. it is true that we're seeing a greater number of acquittals in cases and, by the way, i know this is a minor distinction, but i heard the public defender talking about people being tried that are innocent. that guilty verdict doesn't necessarily equate to someone being innocent. it simply means that we in the prosecution were unable to meet our burden of proof in front of a jury. the reality is that we're experiencing a decrease in our conviction rate directly related to the workload where attorneys don't have sufficient time to handle the cases. and frankly, while i am responsible for the public safety of the community and my goal is to provide the best possible cases that we can in

order to ensure public safety, the public defender has a very narrow responsibility and one that is very, very important. and that is to aggressively defend, regardless of whether the individual commited a crime or not. we're seeing in many cases before we get to our victim to prepare for the cases, the victim has already been contacted by the public defender's office. we're seeing cases where victims are told, if you cooperate this in case, this could lead to the separation of your family and impact whether your husband or boyfriend may be deported from the country. things that i find quite frankly disturbing. the public defender is very correct in saying that our conviction rate is much lower than in neighboring counties. i have to tell you recentry i was at a meeting with the make it district attorneys and were discussing some of of the

problems and these are things that we see in our office day in and day out. i decent don't blame the public defender for doing their job. constitutionally, that is what they do. our system is an adversarial system and it works best when we are appropriate le staffed and funded. when i'm talking about court events. if you are dealing with a complex homicide case, that requires many hours to prepare,

i assure you that we will have to play with the same level and i would argue that we place a greater level of effort because we're the ones that work in the courtroom with the burden of proof. under our system, the defense only have to show there is a reasonable doubt that the allegations that are being proposed by the prosecution did not occur as they are being proposed. on the other hand we have to go beyond a reasonable doubt to con coincidence convince a jury that it did occur. i would have to tell you most complex cases are the cases that you have people practicing medicine without a license and those involved with mortgage fraud schemes. those cases

while there may be a minimum number of court events i can tell you there are hundreds and hundreds of hours invested in these cases and the public defender isn't there to deal with the cases. i choose to use court event because court events that neither office can cook. there are certain numbers that are there and done by the court and through the court's management system. we do not control the number of court events shown in the system. when a case is complex for the public defender, it's equally complex for the prosecution. but when you look at the chart here, you can see that increasingly, we're dealing with very complex cases where the public defender is not here. i'm not here to talk about the historical funding. mr. dachi and i have discussed this presentation and we have frankly agreed to disagree and

we work well together and respect one another and i think san franciscans are very fortunate to have the quality of representation that they have in the public defender. if i were a criminal defendant and i was indigent, i would want nobody else but jeff dachi to defend me, but i'm not here to talk about that. i'm here to talk about how we enhance public safety in this community and we cannot do so if you continue to understaff our district attorney's office and certainly in the area of domestic violence we have seen the consequences and i think domestic violence is really important to look at. because this is an area where we're often talking about people's lives. and not only are we talking about the victim, and the offender,, but we're talking about entire families. we're talking about communities. the reality is that if i were to walk into a prison system today, almost everyone of those individuals that is there was raised in a home where at some

point there was violence in the home. this is an epidemic in our country and we have an obligation to do something about it. you have an opportunity today to show your support for doing what is right. and what is right is to staff this unit appropriately, so that we increase our conviction rate, so that people have consequences for bad behavior. and we continue on the road to recovery when dealing with domestic violence. i thank you very much for your attention. unless you have another questions, i would just ask for your support. >> president chiu? >> thank you, mr. chair. i do have a couple of follow-up questions and i appreciate this dialogue, because obviously there is a lot of data that we're looking at. and i think it's important for both sides to be able to review the data and get us your feedback. i have given to your staff a couple of slides from mr. odachi's presentation and i just wanted to make sure we're talking about the right thing.

my sense is that we're talking apples-to-oranges. what i heard you say first of all in the d.a.'s office, you have nine. >> that is correct. we have nine. >> in this particular slide it's addressed that the public defenders office has 60 cases per criminal attorney and the district attorney has 30. are we comparing apples-to-oranges? i know when i was in the d.a.'s office it was in the hundreds and i'm wondering what that number is >> it's in the hundreds and i will go through this. i don't have that information

here, but i think we need to get back to reality here. okay? every time that ere there is a council case, there will be a district attorney. that not necessarily the case for the public defender. so i don't know how you mathematically say that the public defender's office handles more. that is mathematically impossible. we're there 100% of the time and they are there 50% of the time in 2012. i could get you the actual workload analysis for the misdemeanor unit. i don't have that with me today. >> i just wanted to ask two questions about that slide, which is a depiction from the public defender's office of the

outcome of various cases. it would show that your office has had very few guilty verdicts after case goes to trial, but one thing to point out when it refers to "mixed verdicts." that refers to cases that were multiple trials presented to a jury and you received guilty convictions, meaning that a defendant is going jail, going prison because of those guilty pleas right? >> frankly, i'm a little confused when i see the math here. i have noticed in the public defender's office, they will count a victory if there is a non-guilty verdict on one count. that would be like having two baseball teams going for the world series, winning the games and actually becoming the world series champion and the other team saying well, i scored more runs during the season. the reality is that the one who wins the series is the one who wins the series at the en