MA Gov. Deval Patrick Announces 20 Million Dollar Trial Court Budget Cut

Gov. Deval Patrick cuts over 20 million dollars in state trial court budget. End Quote

Reducing the budget this drastically will negatively impact the fairness of the criminal justice system in Massachusetts.

Boston, MA-NH (1888PressRelease) February 25, 2010 - Governor Deval Patrick's recent proposal to cut more than $20 million dollars from the Massachusetts trial court system will significantly impact the court system in a negative manner. Lawyers and judges are getting together to try to do what they can but they might have an uphill battle on this one. The budget cuts would propose 250-750 new layoffs along with a weakening court system in an already struggling market place.

All heads of the state have been meeting and coming up with a plan to turn governor Deval Patrick's budget cut around and restore some of, if not all of the budget. The layoffs alone would leave the infrastructure of the Massachusetts court system wounded. During a time of economic crisis money should be diverted in other manners.

Boston area drunk driving defense attorney Russell Matson from madrunkdrivingdefense.com has this to say about the budget cuts:

"Reducing the budget this drastically will negatively impact the fairness of the criminal justice system in Massachusetts. There will be a strong temptation for judges to force defendants to accepting plea deals instead of taking their cases to trial, due to the reduced court resources."

The amount of court cases has significantly increase over the last five years and with this trend continuing in the same direction state attorneys would suffocate under the weight of trying to keep cases moving in a timely manner. With the governors recent announcement of the new budget cuts judges and attorneys are left scrambling to find a solution to these cuts. Under funding the court system is not the answer to allow things to keep moving the right way. A typical end result for an action such as this is things falling through the cracks from a result of all employees becoming burnt out from attempting to pick up the slack from the lost employees. All states are currently having a difficult time figuring out how to exactly make the puzzle pieces work so it is not easy for government officials to determine where the cuts should occur. Attorneys and judges are worried the next year the same trend will follow if something is not done leading to even more layoffs and weakening the Massachusetts court system even further.

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