Defense Counsel Advocacy

July 26, 2023–Due Process Institute and the undersigned criminal justice organizations wrote to Congress to express deep concern about the devastating impact of proposed cuts to the federal indigent defense system. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved funding that is $122 million and $150.4 million, respectively, less than requested. Unless corrected, these cuts could cause the loss of 9-12% of current federal defender staff—even after defenders cut critical programming such as training and IT improvements. Such layoffs would almost certainly decimate the federal defender system, degrade the overall quality of federal indigent defense, and undermine the administration of justice for countless federal defendants. To avert the crisis, Congress should ensure that the Defenders Services account is fully funded at the requested amount. Our federal criminal justice system cannot be sustained unless all components – prosecution, judiciary, and defense – receive adequate and stable funding. Federal defender offices were already operating quite leanly, as evidenced by a recent work measurement study that indicates the need for an additional 256 employees. Instead, the House and Senate bills would potentially result in the loss of 368-493 employees.

Federal indigent defense was already under-resourced as compared to the Department of Justice, and the cuts proposed by the House and Senate would push the system over the brink. Cuts to federal defense will have a ripple effect across the federal criminal legal system. It is estimated that 90 percent of people charged with federal crimes are too poor to hire an attorney and, thus, have a constitutional right to a federal defender or court-appointed counsel. Given that every federal defendant without resources to hire an attorney is entitled to government-paid counsel, no savings could even conceivably be achieved by slashing the federal defender budget. Instead, these proposed budget cuts will simply create chaos. Federal defender offices will be forced to turn down cases that they would ordinarily accept, forcing panel attorneys—most of whom maintain busy practices alongside their CJA work—to make up the difference.

As this year marks the 60th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the federal indigent defense system must be protected from these devastating cuts. Testifying in support of the Criminal Justice Act in 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy extolled the planned system as “the most comprehensive, yet flexible solution ever devised to meet the representation problem in the federal system.” Sixty years later, the future of that system rests in the hands of this Congress and urge for the full funding for the federal indigent defense system and ensure that, in federal court, the scales of justice “measure truth, not legal fees.”