Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) oversees the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

public defender A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Belgium, Hungary and Si ...

system for

indigent Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse

criminal defendants.

Organization and responsibilities

Some attorneys are public defenders employed by the Committee itself.Joe Dwinell
Court-appointed lawyers quick to support pricey practice
''Boston Herald'' (November 18, 2008). Others are private criminal defense attorneys appointed by the courts to represent indigent defendants known as Bar Advocates.Bella English
Considering parole for a teen murderer
''Boston Globe'' (August 7, 2014). CPCS has several divisions: a Private Counsel Division, a Public Defender division, a Youth Advocacy division, and a Mental Health Litigation Division. It also operates an Innocence Program representing those who are wrongfully convicted. In addition to overseeing public defense services for defendants at trial, the committee also assigns counsel to represent inmates in

parole Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...

hearings. CPCS's main office is at 75 Federal Street,

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. It has 20 regional offices across the

commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth ...

.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).

History

CPCS was established in 1983 by the

Massachusetts Legislature The Massachusetts General Court, formally the General Court of Massachusetts, is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts located in the state capital of Boston. The name "General Court" is a holdover from the earliest days o ...

in Chapter 673 of the Acts of 1983.Committee for Public Counsel Services: First Annual Report, 1985
/ref> 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 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has 14 counties, though eight of these fourteen county governments were abolished between 1997 and 2000. The counties in the southeastern portion of the state retain county-level local government (Barnstable, ...

), and the Roxbury Defenders Committee (RDC), a private non-profit that worked in the Roxbury District Court and the Suffolk Superior Court. In 2008, CPCS had 253 staffers, with an estimated 3,000 private attorneys on the list of lawyers approved to be appointed counsel. In 2018, CPCS has approximately 500 staff attorneys and 3,000 private attorneys certified to accept appointments. Audit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services: Overview
Office of the State Auditor (February 28, 2018). In the period 2019–2022, CPCS had an estimated 868 employees and 16 unpaid interns (includes employees who left the organization during this period). 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. Public defenders and other CPCS employees, such as investigators, have repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to

unionize Unionization is the creation and growth of modern trade unions. Trade unions were often seen as a left-wing, socialist concept, whose popularity has increased during the 19th century when a rise in industrial capitalism saw a decrease in motives ...

; efforts in 2015 and 2018 to form a

bargaining unit A bargaining unit, in labor relations, is a group of employees with a clear and identifiable community of interests who is (under US law) represented by a single labor union in collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of negotiat ...

failed. A 2014 study by the

Massachusetts Bar Association The Massachusetts Bar Association (MBA) is a voluntary, non-profit bar association in Massachusetts with a headquarters on West Street in Boston's Downtown Crossing. The MBA also has a Western Massachusetts office. The purpose of the MBA is t ...

found that Massachusetts had the lowest-paid public defenders in the country. 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. 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 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

, advocated for the dismissal of cases. In 2017, approximately 6,000 drug cases were dismissed because of the misconduct, although the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously fu ...

declined CPCS's request for wholesale dismissal of all cases linked. In 2019, CPCS's servers were targeted by a

ransomware Ransomware is a type of malware that Encryption, encrypts the victim's personal data until a ransom is paid. Difficult-to-trace Digital currency, digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, cryptocurrencies are com ...

attack, disrupting operations;Andy Rosen, yberattack with ransom demand has disrupted public defenders for weeks ''Boston Globe'' (March 12, 2019) it took around 10 business days for data to be fully restored.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official website
Public defense institutions Massachusetts law Organizations established in 1983 Organizations based in Boston

Organization and responsibilities

History

References

Further reading

External links