Are . Who are actually new to a country, and perhaps outside of social services or Family Support networks that would otherwise help intervene in these situations. And really provide an opportunity to get them acculturated to advocate for themselves or go to the appropriate governmental agencis when necessary. In particular, what we need is appropriate legal advice, this group does serve as a gateway, clearinghouse organization and they do provide referralals to the appropriate other organizations that provide pro bono or lowcost legal services. That without with women who have dont nowhere to go and dont know what their rights are would be at a loss. So i again stringly ong strongly ask to you support these recommendations for these funds. Supervisor mar, i just wanted to thank director rossi and director gomez for the importance of this program. And i know the group very well and the work of legal outreach, which i used to be a law clerk in 87, quite a few years ago, but i know how i
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 Defenders 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 wh
The question we were asked by the budget analysty was whether or not the Public Defenders 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 tha
San francisco juries, this doesnt count people who plead guilty or entered other [stkpaoupbgsz ] 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 its Something Like 98 . In San Francisco the reason why were i think were expending resource wheres we dont need to, because were trying cases that dont 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 were insisting on a jury trial and not to play tit for tat, because i dont think were here for that, but the District
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