Sacramento DA Jan Scully said yesterday that amid a $6.9 million budget cut for the next fiscal year her office will be laying off 50 employees. Those fired include 11 deputy district attorneys whose responsibilities include prosecuting misdemeanors.

One likely consequence, according to Scully, will be a higher number of plea bargains for relatively minor offenses: “What you might see is in the more minor cases,” said Scully, “you might see us early on giving better deals to get that case out of the system. We’re going to need to … focus mostly on the serious and violent felonies”