Healey urges bar advocates to resume taking cases amid pay talks

Gov. Maura T. Healey on July 23 called for striking attorneys to get back to work while they continue to push for greater pay, and did not take a stance on whether their pay should be raised.

“I’ve had conversations with the Legislature. I can tell you that the Legislature is actively working on this. They’re not there yet in terms of a resolution,” Healey told reporters. “My hope is that we see a resolution very, very quickly, and in the meantime, I’d like to see lawyers back in court representing defendants.”

Hundreds of so-called bar advocates stopped taking new court-appointed cases in late May to protest their pay rates, which they say are far lower than those in neighboring states. The private attorneys represent defendants across the state who otherwise would be unable to afford legal representation. They handle about 80 percent of the overall public defense caseload in Massachusetts.

Boston Municipal Court Chief Justice Tracy-Lee Lyons on July 22 dismissed more than a hundred cases due to the inability of the government to provide defendants with lawyers. The cases dropped involved crimes ranging from shoplifting to assault.

The judge dismissed cases under the Lavallee protocol, a protocol established by the Supreme Judicial Court in 2004 in Lavallee v. Justices in the Hampden Superior Court that requires the state to release pretrial defendants who have not been assigned a lawyer within seven days of being detained, and to dismiss cases in which defendants have spent more than 45 days without an attorney. Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin R. Hayden’s spokesman said on July 22 that “many more” dismissals were “expected in coming days and weeks.”

Neither legislative budget writers nor Healey have dictated a specific figure they think the attorneys should be paid. Asked on July 23 if she supports bar advocates’ pay being raised, Healey did not take a stance.

“I certainly support the notion that people should be paid fairly for the job that they do. You know, this is a challenging budget season right now. And they came in — actually, they didn’t come in. They didn’t raise it with me when I filed my [proposed] budget way back in January. They chose to go the route of work stoppage,” Healey said.

Healey said that she would “leave it up to the Legislature” to determine the dollar figure attached to a resolution “in what is a challenging budget scenario.” She has previously said she thinks “money is part of it, absolutely, but the question is, how much more money and when?”

“So I would just strongly encourage people to get back to court and continue to represent and take cases in court while the Legislature works with them to resolve this,” the governor said.

Top legislative Democrats recently called the work stoppage a “$100 million issue,” as the state continues to assess the economic and federal funding outlooks in Massachusetts. The state has more than $8 billion in cash reserves.

Healey has repeatedly called the situation “a matter of public safety.”

“We’ve got defendants who are entitled to due process and representation. We’ve got victims who need to make sure that their cases are addressed and heard, and we’ve got a system of justice that depends on that,” Healey said.