i'm grappling with in terms of moving forward. >> as are the controllers and mayor's office grappling with. >> >> if >> we should have that report for you soon. >> thank you very much. i am here to address two questions that were raised by the budget analyst and address inaccuracies in the report submitted by the district attorney. i have discussed this with district attorney and he is aquire of aware of the

concerns. i support domestic violence services. the two issues i was asked to address by the budget analyst, the first concerned our staffing and how the public defenders' office staffs domestic violence and cases that are handled by private attorneys who are retained or attorneys who are appointed because there is a conflict of interest. i have a powerpoint. i have a handout for the

supervisors. the question we were asked by the budget analysty was whether or not the public defender's office had staff dedicated exclusively to handling domestic violence cases? before august, 2012 our office are two dedicated attorneys who handled only domestic violence cases. we changed that in august, 2012. now all of the misdemeanor domestic violence cases are

assigned to 12 misdemeanor attorneys who handle all types of cases. you might wonder why they decided to change that? what was happening is because we only had two attorneys handling domestic violence cases, the trials, particularly the ones where they had to be out to trial within a certain period of time were getting backed up. and people were not able to bring their cases to trial in a timely fashion and we were getting a lot of complaints from individuals who wanted their cases tried. and because we only had two attorneys handling those cases, sometimes one attorney would have 6 and 7 cases backed up. the consequence of that is that you would have to wait in jail for weeks, sometimes months before your case went to trial, because your attorney was not available. and so we changed that. and instead, we spread all of the domestic violence cases over our entire staff that handles misdemeanor cases.

now the district attorney chooses to assign their cases presently to three dedicated domestic violence attorneys and not to their 12 regular misdemeanor attorneys. and so with that new staffing level, the d.a. would have seven dedicated domestic violence attorneys and we would have none. just so you get a sense of what it would look like. prior to august, 20 12 this is what our staff looked like. public defenders, each figure represents an torn. attorney. ten are conflicted ten are depicted in black and two in red:the district attorney's office choose to have a

dedicated staff to handle domestic violence cases and they had three. what happens is after august 12 , it's the same attorneys. one of the things we were asked, the public defender has 12 attorneys doing domestic violence cases and that is where the district attorney's office is being overwhelmed. that is not true. we have the same 12 attorneys, but 10% of each of their caseloads now includes domestic violence. so each attorney is handling domestic violence and that is indicated by the red appendage. the district attorney still has 1ing misdemeanor cases, but has three attorneys who are handling domestic violence cases, depicted in the red. now the average caseload handled by a public defender is 60 cases per lawyer. and that includes, again, all other misdemeanor cases, everything from battery to assault, drunk-driving and things of that nature and also

10% of their caseload is domestic violence cases. the district attorney, their average caseload according to their report is 30. so their caseload is half of our caseload right now. and if you look -- again, 12 attorneys handling regular misdemeanor assignments and three attorneys who are handling domestic violence. and the case load of those three attorneys handling domestic violence for misdemeanors now is 30. now once you change the staffing level, you are going to have again 12 public defenders handling misdemeanor domestic violence and other misdemeanor cases. and then you will have 12 misdemeanor district attorneys handling case other than domestic violence and seven lawyers who are handling exclusively domestic violence cases. that would reduce their caseload to 15, actually less

than 15 12-13 per lawyer. so other question i was asked by the budget amount, is it true what the district attorney says, that the public defender only handles 52% of the cases? and they asked me, what percentage of the cases does the public defender handle in general and what number of domestic violence cases does the public defender handle? we have in san francisco a court management system this. is one system that produces statistics that have been used for years and years and it is currently the only integrated system that we have to draw statisticks from. so i went to the personal who operates the system and asked foyer data and

for the data. now what is interesting is that what the district attorney showed you in those two circles is saying we only handle 52% on and page 31 of the report he is aing that they handled 112,987 court events while the public defender handled only 59,309 court events. when i asked the folk at the court management system with this, well first let me say, i have been public defender now for ten years and have never seen a district attorney count their caseload for workload by court events. court events have very little correlation to the work you are doing. why? because court events mean there is a case on calendar and what the district attorney is saying that if there is a court

on calendar it's our case, but that includes everything from a person who adds themselves to calendar because they want to have their case heard. people who don't show up to court is all included in the 112,000 court events and it doesn't distinguish in my way between serious cases and non-serious cases. you could have a dui case where you show up to court five times and a murder case you show up to 30 times and it's essentially treated the same. court events only capture the total number of attorney appearances and doesn't capture the work done outside of court, any investigative or motions work, none of that. so it's an extremely inaccurate measure and have i never seen it done this way and the district attorney incorrectly extrapolates our workload is only 51% because they divide 59 by 112 and then they say that they are handling 91% of all cases because they are handling

twice the number of cases that we are. and actually, that is not true. what the case load again showed, and this is based on the actual cases. these are reports that are generated as a matter of course by the court management system. we handle of 65% of all cases. is there a way they can't be measured? yes. the modern way to count cases is the industry standard now is to use what is called "the case load or workload analogy." essentially what you do is you assign a value to a case, in terms of the number of hours it takes. in our office in 2003 we worked with the controller's office and they spent six months in our office developing these standards. misdemeanorses we have five different case types depending on complexity of the case for felonies we have four different case types from regular felonis

to serious y felonis to three strikes and murder. you figure out the time that the attorney has to handle the case and look at the experience level of the attorney and you figure out what an adequate caseload is, given the number of hours that the attorney works a year? and this is a science. this is something that most offices are beginning to do now. so i have copies of the report. and the problem is without this information you have no way of knowing how many cases the district attorney's office is handling, the public defender's office is handing and how serious the cases are. one of the points that we make in our report is that we have seen a huge increase in three-strike cases and homicide cases over the past six years. and so that is something that

obviously effects the workload, but not the case load >> if you simply count cases you won't distinguish between more serious cases and less serious cases and you will see in our report we have broken down by attorney. every attorney's caseload and workload is reflected in the index and that is how we determine what number of cases we can handle. and we use that to provide that to the mayor's budget office. the second issue also relates to the question of trials. and you saw in the report that the number of cases referred by the police department to the district attorney, domestic violence cases has been reduced by 40%. we have seen that and it does affect your caseload as well. we are also seen according to the district attorney, they are filing 20% fewer domestic violence cases between 2010 and

2012. that is true. but it is true that there has been an increase in the number of jury trials, but the question that has to be asked is why and who is trying the cases? this shows the number of jury trials from 2009 to 2012. in which you see clearly here, is that there has been an increase in jury trials. in 2009, the district attorney tried eleven, in 2010 they tried 30 and in 2011 they tried 29. in 2012 they tried 49. and then we have the number of cases that are tried by the private bar. and so the private bar, either because there is a conflict of interest or because they are privately retained, they also have cases that were tried. they only tried one in 2009. eleven in 2010, 3 in 2011 and 12 in 2012. what you see is the public defenders office is trying the majority of the cases. in other words,, we are

handling more cases or trying more cases than the proportion of cases that are assigned to us. so we tried 91% of the cases in 2010, 63% in -- 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.