Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services

In Massachusetts, the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) oversees the state public defender system for indigent criminal defendants.[1]

Organization and responsibilities

Some attorneys are public defenders employed by the Committee itself.[2] Others are private criminal defense attorneys appointed by the courts to represent indigent defendants.[2][3][4]

CPCS has several divisions: a Private Counsel Division,[5] a Public Defender division,[5][6] a Youth Advocacy division,[5][7] and a Mental Health Litigation Division.[5] It also operates an Innocence Program representing those who are wrongfully convicted.[8] In addition to overseeing public defense services for defendants at trial, the committee also assigns counsel to represent inmates in parole hearings.[4]

CPCS's main office is at 75 Federal Street, Boston. It has 20 regional offices across the commonwealth.[9]

History

CPCS was established in 1983 by the Massachusetts Legislature in Chapter 673 of the Acts of 1983.[10] It consolidated scattered previous programs including the Massachusetts Defenders Committee (MDC) (a public defender program established in 1960), the County Bar Advocate Program (a court-appointed counsel program affiliated with bar associations in most Massachusetts counties), and the Roxbury Defenders Committee (RDC), a private non-profit that worked in the Roxbury District Court and the Suffolk Superior Court.[10]

In 2008, CPCS had 253 staffers, with an estimated 3,000 private attorneys on the list of lawyers approved to be appointed counsel.[2] In 2018, CPCS has approximately 500 staff attorneys and 3,000 private attorneys certified to accept appointments.[5] In the period 2019-2022, CPCS had an estimated 868 employees and 16 unpaid interns (includes employees who left the organization during this period).[9]

As of 2008, private attorneys assigned to represent indigents were paid an hourly rate of $100 for murder cases, $60 for Superior Court cases, and $50 for district court cases.[2]

Public defenders and other CPCS employees, such as investigators, have repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to unionize; efforts in 2015 and 2018 to form a bargaining unit failed.[11][12] A 2014 study by the Massachusetts Bar Association found that Massachusetts had the lowest-paid public defenders in the country.[13] In 2017, thousands of private court-appointed attorneys in Massachusetts were not paid for weeks for their services; the legislature ultimately approved retroactive funds to compensate them.[14]

After the Annie Dookhan scandal (in which a Massachusetts drug lab chemist falsified test results, implicating many defendants), CPCS as well as the ACLU of Massachusetts, advocated for the dismissal of cases. In 2017, approximately 6,000 drug cases were dismissed because of the misconduc, although the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declined CPCS's request for wholesale dismissal of all cases linked.[15][16][17]

In 2019, CPCS's servers were targeted by a ransomware attack, disrupting operations;[18][19] it took around 10 business days for data to be fully restored.[9]

References
  1. Hassan Kanu, A lawyer's racism can impede duty to client, Massachusetts high court says, Reuters (June 20, 2023).
  2. Joe Dwinell, Court-appointed lawyers quick to support pricey practice, Boston Herald (November 18, 2008).
  3. Matt Pratt, Man in prison 21 years for '94 slaying might be freed, Associated Press (May 17, 2015).
  4. Bella English, Considering parole for a teen murderer, Boston Globe (August 7, 2014).
  5. Audit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services: Overview, Office of the State Auditor (February 28, 2018).
  6. Mary Markos, Charlie Baker's dangerousness bill under fire, Boston Heralds (May 14, 2019).
  7. Flint McColgan, Juvenile defense attorney named top Suffolk Juvenile Prosecutor, Boston Herald (October 18, 2022).
  8. George Perrot, whose decades-old rape conviction was overturned, faces a new rape charge, Boston Globe (May 5, 2019).
  9. Audit No. 2022-1104-3J, Audit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services Overview of Audited Entity for the period January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2021, Office of the State Auditor (June 9, 2023).
  10. Committee for Public Counsel Services: First Annual Report, 1985
  11. Katie Johnston, Public defenders, facing abysmal pay, attempt to unionize (July 2, 2015).
  12. Katie Johnston, Public defenders' bid for union rights again falls short, Boston Globe (August 7, 2018).
  13. John R. Ellement, Criminal justice lawyers are becoming 'working poor,' study says, Boston Globe (May 8, 2014).
  14. Maria Cramer, Baker signs bill to compensate lawyers for the poor, Boston Globe (July 11, 2017).
  15. Shawn Musgrave, 6000 drug cases to be dismissed after misconduct by chemist, prosecutors, Boston Globe (November 13, 2017)
  16. Andy Rosen, State’s highest court orders prosecutors to drop weak Dookhan cases, Boston Globe (January 18, 2017).
  17. Shawn Musgrave, Thousands of defendants with vacated convictions will get money back, Boston Globe (October 31, 2018).
  18. Hiawatha Bray, Ransomware attacks: Not if, but when, agencies say, Boston Globe (July 15, 2019).
  19. Andy Rosen, [Cyberattack with ransom demand has disrupted public defenders for weeks], Boston Globe (March 12, 2019)

Further reading
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