Bill > H3359

This bill mandates the creation of a report by October 1, 2012, detailing all criminal and delinquency cases initiated in Massachusetts courts during fiscal year 2011, broken down by court type and specific charges like murder or manslaughter, and also including petitions for sexually dangerous persons. This report will specify how many of these cases involved an assistant district attorney, a public defender employed by the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), or a private attorney also employed by the CPCS, with a "case" defined as one defendant with related charges. Subsequently, for fiscal year 2013 and beyond, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance and legislative committees will use a weighted system to determine budgets for district attorneys and the criminal caseload of the CPCS, assigning different values to various case types (e.g., a homicide case is weighted higher than a standard district court criminal case). From these weights, a caseload ratio will be established, and after January 1, 2013, annual appropriations for district attorneys and the CPCS's criminal caseload cannot exceed this ratio by more than 10 percent.