[more of Trump’s Freedumb] Can Indigent Defendants Get a Zealous Criminal Defense from a Broke, Overworked, Law Cropper? Court-Appointed Federal Criminal Attorneys have Gone Months without Pay

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  • Court-appointed federal defense lawyers have not been paid since July.

  • Payment delays affect lawyers, paralegals, clerks, and expert witnesses.

  • Federal budget shortfalls may worsen if a government shutdown occurs.

  • Delays disrupt criminal cases and could threaten access to justice.

From [HERE] Lawyers appointed to represent poor criminal defendants in federal court have not been paid in months, and the delay may continue — causing dysfunction in the criminal justice system and financial harm to many people, not just lawyers — if the federal government shuts down next week.

Many court-appointed defense lawyers are owed tens of thousands of dollars, and while they are required to keep representing clients in pending cases, some are refusing to take on new ones until payments resume, according to a recent report by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

They are sometimes delaying their pending cases, unable to spend hundreds of dollars on transcripts or gas and hotel rooms, leaving defendants without resolutions to their cases.

Paralegals, clerks, expert witnesses, administrative assistants and others are affected in addition to lawyers.

The federal judiciary ran out of money in July to pay court-appointed criminal defense attorneys for defendants who can’t afford a lawyer, blaming the shortfall on its budget to pay them fiscal year 2025 being frozen to the prior year’s level. In a press release earlier this month, the judiciary said that at least $76 million in payments would have to be deferred to the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, and that the budget crisis could deepen.

“I am really concerned about the stability of the entire program if this kind of funding crisis continues much longer,” said Gerald Ruter, a Baltimore criminal defense attorney, who is one of two lawyers who lead Maryland’s panel of court-appointed defense lawyers.

Court-appointed lawyers and the Federal Public Defender represent more than 90% of criminal defendants in federal court, according to multiple sources. [MORE]