Florida State Attorney Harry Shorstein recent­ly said that cuts to his bud­get could force his staff to make tough deci­sions with regard to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. Shorstein said a pre­dict­ed bud­get cut for the 20 state attor­ney offices in Florida would be ​“cat­a­stroph­ic,” pro­ject­ing that his staff alone would lose 16 mem­bers and may have to aban­don expen­sive death penal­ty cas­es. ​“There will be cas­es that can’t be tried. Will it mean we can’t get to the tri­als? Will it take longer? Will it, will it clog the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? Yes.… We are strained to the break­ing point.… Instead of seek­ing the death penal­ty, maybe we’ll seek some­thing else,” Shorstein said.

He pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics from the Florida Department of Corrections that show the Fourth Judicial Circuit (which Shorstein’s office cov­ers) leads all oth­er cir­cuits with 42 inmates on death row. The prob­lem, he indi­cat­ed, is that law enforce­ment agen­cies have increased bud­gets, put more offi­cers on the streets and made more arrests, but that the State’s Attorney’s Office has not grown to meet the increased pros­e­cu­tion demands. Cuts to the Office’s bud­get would leave staff with­out the finances need to han­dle these cas­es.

Duval County Sheriff John Rutherford echoed Shorstein’s frus­tra­tion, not­ing that the state plans to increase his bud­get dur­ing the com­ing year due to an increase in vio­lent crime and the coun­ty’s mur­der rate. He said it is frus­trat­ing to have his offi­cers make arrests only to have sus­pects not go to tri­al because of a shrink­ing State Attorney’s bud­get. He not­ed, ​“We can’t keep putting them in jail and let­ting them go.”
(Jacksonville Daily Record, September 13, 2007). See Costs and Representation.

Tags
Citation Guide