when supervisor chiu asked about the funding, or the staffing level of the district attorney's investors the public defender's office. this is actually an undercount, because both offices, both the district attorney and public defender use what is called "volunteer attorneys." and i don't know if this was in practice when you were there, but these tomorrows handle full-time caseloads to get trial experience. the district attorney has many more than we do, but that is what accounts for the total number of bodis that are handling cases. if you have a body working full-time, we count that as a lawyer. we haven't been able to hire an attorney for the last year because of funding issues related to our own budget. to the extent we can, we have tried to use volunteer attorneys to fill that gap. i'm sure that the district attorney is referring to the ftes, the full-time positions he has dedicated for that

purpose. the chart here, let me make it perfectly clear, this is not guilty there, this means a complete acquittal of all charges. an acquittalis only when you get across the board not guilty. with respect to, we go to the hung juries, where a jury can't make a decision and guilty is where they are convicted of all the charges. so i want to be clear that is what these represent. when you see 54% of your cases, juries saying they are not guilty of that crime, that should at least require that you take pause and say should we have prosecuted that case?

if the answer is no, they should not be trying that case. you could argue that domestic violence cases we should try every case, but again, do we have the resources to do that in each and every case? and supervisor chiu, you also asked about the question of whether we should be prosecuting more cases by virtue of the fact that there is a low conviction rate in san francisco? and again, it depends on who you are prosecuting. if you are prosecuting -- if you are going to say every one of these people who san francisco juries found not guilty, 90% of the time in 2009, 32% of the time in 2010, 46% of the time in 2011 and 2012, 54, was completely wrong. they must have slept through

the trial. then i guess you can make that conclusion. but the reality is that if you are getting these kinds of results, you should seriously question the outcomes. one of the biggest changes that we now have a new presiding judge in department 17, where all the cases go through and in the one month he has been there managed to settle 30-40% more misdemeanor cases than his predecessor. so we're expecting a reduction because of that. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other questions? >> let me just try to be really brief. i know as supervisors farrell and avalos mentioned this is a precursor to more budget discussion on staffing. i wanted to say to our district attorney mr. gascon, a appreciate the emotion of the audio that you started with and

for the greatest work that has been done and the one thing left out is the staffing of the victim witness advocates within the d.a.'s office, which i am strongly supportive of and the 440 victims and i wanted to drill down because i that the data being used is misleading. it's implying that court events are the way that you determine how much work is determined by the office and i think the public defender's breaking down of case times 1-5 and weighing the amount of work done is a much more valuable way to look at the amount of work that is

done. so my hope is that we get the data of the type of 1-5 cases. for the district attorney's office, i think getting to data that is really useful, so that we could see what the needs of your office is really important. i did feel that some of the slides and the use of the court events was [ph*-eugs/] leading to note if you could respond to that. >> i could. the court events are the only information that we have that could not be manipulated. if you want to go back for

information that looks more favorable, i could do that. we tried to take universal data that we have available today. it's not necessary ily saying it's great, but to take that data and i think most reasonably people will say understanding that a court event could be anywhere from a 30-second standing in front of a judge to hours' of litigation, i don't think it's unreasonable to say that you can extrapolate for that that is indicative of the total workload and especially if you consider and you understand the nature of the work, and you understand that actually the most complex cases the district attorney's office handles are never represented by the public defender, like cases on the special prosecution side. yet we do not intend to inflate

those numbers by saying that we're spending in this particular white-collar crime case thousands of hours when we know that would not be representative of many of the other work that we do. court events represent how many times a lawyer is in front of the judge, regardless of the time. any time that there is a public defender there, there is going to be a district attorney. if you have a complex case for the public defender, you have a complex case for the district attorney. and i would argue, and i know mr. mar, you are an attorney and it's much more difficult to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, then it is to simply show that there may be a reasonable doubt. so while i appreciate the work that the public defender is trying to do and probably getting to what

eventually be to where we should all be, that number cannot come either office, but that number needs to come from an impartial third party, the court or somebody else and that is not what we have today. so i understand your concern, but i hope you look at this from a plain look at these things and that you look at it for what it is. if there is a court event, and it's a criminal case, the d.a. is going to be there. > >> okay. thank you. d.a. gascon, unless is pertaining to this item, this is for future discussion -- :it's about caseload. there is a report that ben rosenthal sent with all the data created by the court management system, all of those

numbers state the actual case loads for our offices. one report for us and one report for the district attorney and i believe it was sent to the supervisors y esterday by ben rosenfield. >> okay. thank you very much. colleagues any other question okay, with that, i would like to turn to our budget and legislative analyst for this their report. >> mr. chairman, members of the committee, contrary to the statement that -- "somewhat arbitrary," nothing could be further from the truth and our recommendations were based on a careful and detailed analysis of the documentation and the data. i would like to briefly summarize our report and to make comments.

>> mr. chairman, members of the committee, deb radio newman from the budget analyst's office. i just wanted to take a moment at the beginning. and respond to questions raised. supervisor chiu you asked about the caseload data for the district attorney of an average caseload of 30 per attorney and where that number came from. if you look at table 3 on our report 11, actually based on the information provided by the district attorney, there show and average caseload per attorney, this is for the domestic violence division, of those cases assigned to trial, it shows 30 caseload per attorney average. and again, this is based -- it does show that is going up and that those are possibly the numbers that were being used

there. >> through the chair, a clarification, i wasn't studenting that number, but i was disputeing 60 cases from the public defender's misdemeanor caseload versus the 30. i think that is comparing apples to oranges and the appropriate comparison would be 60 cases per criminal defense attorney in the misdemeanor unit on the public deferreders side versus a couple hundred on the district attorney's side. that is what i was really getting it. >> this does not show anything for the public defender, nor talk about overall caseload for the department. it's just focusing on the domestic violence cases. i would also like to respond, supervisor mar, you were asking about the caseload, the reduction from the police department. and questioning the district attorney about the difference. i would just comment that looking at table 10 and table 11 on page 19 of our report,

table 10 reflects the case load data that we compile based on a lot of information provided by the police department. and that does show a 32% reduction in 2012 and an overall 48% reduction over the last five years. while the district attorney takes exception with that and we did go back to the police department and clarify that those are the actual cases being referred to the district attorney's office, if you look at table 11 on the bottom, that is information provided by the district attorney. which actually shows the same trend. although not as large. they showed the actual number of cases being referred to the district attorney going down. as well as the number of cases being charged by the district attorney going down by the order of 18%, over the last two years. >> thank you, supervisor mar? >> thank you.

miss newman i know miss dubury mentioned 2012 seemed to be an anomaly and if you could look at trend for five years, but looks like 2012 was a significant drop. i am wondering if you could address that? >> certainly, through the chair, supervisor mar, we agree it does look like an anomaly and when i get to our recommendations it's one of the reasons that we make a recommendation for all limited positions because if that trend does continue, there is -- and i can explain it more there. but there is a one-year difference quite significant going on and we're concerned about making a big increase of permanent positions based on one-year of quite significant data. so going back to just

overall summary, i would note on page 8, or in table 8, that is table 8 on page 16 of our report. it shows the department on the status of women fiscal year 12-13 general fund requests, that is part of this supplemental for $304,412 for the subject domestic violence supplemental. as well as the anticipated annual general fund ongoing cost of $509,000 that would be incured in future years based on these current costs. in addition, table 9 on page 17 of our report identifies the district attorney's current request of $446,000 of general fund appropriation for 3.6

full-time equivalent. $1.2 million for 11 full-time equivalent positions that would be incurred in fiscal year 13 -14. the public defender has discussed some of their concerns. they also relayed to us that if the request as proposed here was approved, that there is likely to be an increase in prosecutions and trials, and there could be a supplemental request by the public defender for additional positions for parity. similarly, if the district attorney does prosecute more

cases and more cases are sent to probation and to jails there could possibly be a ripple effect with probation and the sheriff. moving to our recommendations i would note question of 11 positions would result in 100% in the d.a.'s domestic violence staffing. to 22 positions and cases from the police department have decreased and 18.5% in domestic violence cases charged by the d.a. in 2010-2011. the d.a. is

advising that their caseloads are actually increasing primarily due to the increased number of trials, particularly for the misdemeanor domestic violence trials. moving to the recommendations. they are summerized on page 20 of our report. to both address these additional caseload concerns that are occur right now,ring right now in addition, to the dropping of the cases dropped by the police department and as summarized on page 21 in page 12 of our report, we're recommending two limited-term attorney positions. the addition of these two positions would reduce the average caseload per attorney per month from 30 to 24, 20% reduction. and the average number of trials, both the felony and misdemeanor trials per attorney per year going down from 5

trials to 4 trials and we're making a recommendation for d.a. investigator positions, dedicated to domestic violence in the d.a.'s office and would provide support to those attorneys in processing the domestic violence cases, offsetting in addition, the attorney workload. we're also recommending one limited term investigative assistant, basically a paralegal position to also assist the domestic violence unit and that would increase the paralegals to two within that unit. we're also recommending the approval of the departmental status on women, the 18-24 principal administrative analyst, but as was discussed earlier, we're recommending and the department concurs a reduction in the current year due to simply a timing issue

for when they could actually hire that position. so in summary, we're recommending that five of the 11 positions being requested for the district attorney and the one position for the department on the status of women. specifically as shown on page 22, we would recommend that you amend the proposed annual salary ordinance to reflect the one new permanent department on status of women, 124 principal administrative analyst position at .33 full-time equivalent in stead of the .550 full-time equivalent and also that you identify all district attorney positions as limited tenure, so there is time to come back and analyze workload and five positions in the district attorney's office that i just outlined. in addition, recommendation no. 2 is to amend the proposed

supplemental appropriation as i outlined, where general fund savings this year of $258,933 and for our third recommendation approval of the balance of the 6 da positions, $50,000 for the one-time outreach and warnaco campaign for the department on the status of women, $178,000 for the non-profit service contracts are a policy decision for the board of supervisors. he would be happy to answer questions. >> colleagues in pryzchiu? >> thank you for your report and you were sifting through an awful lot of information. so thank you for your patience. first of all with regards with recommendations to a number of

attorneys to allot, as you described. the additional two recommended positions that you are proposing would reduce caseloads per month by 20%. average number of trials by 20% and i wondered how did you arrive at that number, given that in table 3 of your report, you note that the number of cases per month has increased 73%, misdemeanor jury trials increased by 125%, total jury trials increased by 81%. it seems to me a requisite number of attorneys to deal with that to get us back to a more stable place would have been a higher number. >> president chiu on those numbers we took current year caseload and sliver simply looked at the impact on two attorneys on the case load.

caseload reported for 2012, we looked at nine attorneys and the impact of having 11 rather than 9. >> okay getting to your question, your recommendation around victim witness investigator position. i was surprised there weren't any recommendations in that area and i want to understand that you state that the district attorney's office received $300,000 of general fund this past budget to fund the three previously grant funded position. my understanding is that state and federal grant sources dried up what in previous years around ad[sro-ebgts/]s victim witnesses and, in fact, i also understand there has been a 20% increase in the number of victims served by the d.a.'s office and no change in staff

and i'm wondering if the mayor's office or d.a.'s office could provide a little bit of light on this issue? >> supervisor, kate howard, through the chair. generally, what you have described is correct. there were a number of grants that the district attorney used over the last several years to support victim services among other services that they provided. in last year's budget the general fund did come behind and support the continuation of those services. >> do you have a perspective on that? >> our way of looking at it when grant funds go away, it's discretionary and part of the board of supervisors whether they want to back fill the position with general fund monies. that we consider this to be an increase in general fund cost to the department that otherwise those positions would

have terminated, which is the case with grant-funded positions. and so we thought that -- we acknowledge that there is not an increase in the number of bodies, but we do say that alternatively those positions would have terminated with the termination of the grant funding. >> thank you. the way i read it in your recommendations suggests that the d.a.'s office received that but it's general fund revenue to make up for the cuts in state and federal funding. from my perspective i think attorneys are obviously important. but also ensuring that will are competent individuals who are provided culturally competent services to victims and witnesses as they come through. we heard mr. adachi talk about the work he does with his clients and his defendants and i think that is all extremely

important and good. on the flipside of that, the d.a.'s office handles relationships and ensures that victims and witnesss are being taken care of during the criminal justice system as we move through the criminal proceedings. i think it's very important that that portion of the appropriations also be supported. back to you, mr. chair. >> thank you, president chiu. colleagues any other questions of staff? seeing none, i will open it up to public comment. i have a number of speaker cards. if you want to fill out a speaker card, we have them available here. otherwise you can line up after these folks are called. so if you will speak in this order: [ reading speakers' names ]

>> good afternoon, supervisor, ads serves survivors of domestic violence and other forms of violence against women and both trafficking within our shelter, as well as for outside clients. most of our

[speaker not understood] we see women on the streets and living in cars and they need to be brought into shelters and greeted with appropriate services. and recently i watched a survivor and her children playing a game of tag in the backyard and i reflected on the

irony of what brought her to the shelter, which was a very real and lethal game of tag she was escaping from her batterer. so we urge you to consider the other needs of survives. survivors. thank you. >> thank you, [tph-efrplts/] speaker. >> my name is stacy lambright, a staff attorney and represent [speaker not understood]

we have identified gaps in legal services to african-american survivors in san francisco. bay legal is currently hosting a legal fellow named kimmy -- she is an equal justice work fellow and she has been leading a collaboration of domestic violence service provideers