‘Funding crisis' means private attorneys who take federal public defense cases won't be paid for months

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SPRINGFIELD — As the state grapples with a work stoppage over pay for private attorneys who represent indigent defendants, the system that ensures representation for those in federal court is also in crisis.
The program that pays private attorneys to represent those who can't afford a lawyer in federal court ran out of money last month and won't be able to pay lawyers until the new federal fiscal year in October, according to a statement from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
'Not only are lawyers not getting paid, but the investigators and experts we use won't get paid either,' said Peter Alexander Slepchuk, a Springfield lawyer who is on the panel of private attorneys who takes the cases. 'It does create a problem.'
Across the country, about 40% of indigent people in federal court are represented by private attorneys who are part of a court district's Criminal Justice Act Panel, according the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The rest of the low-income defendants are represented by staff from federal public defender offices that employ lawyers full time, similar to the Committee for Public Counsel in Massachusetts.
The courts ran out of money to pay the private attorneys for cases in July. 'The continuing resolution to fund the government for fiscal year 2025 passed by Congress in March froze all Judicial Branch funding at the FY 2024 level, which resulted in panel attorney funding running out unusually early,' the administrative court office said in a statement.
'CJA lawyers are performing constitutionally required legal work on behalf of defendants,' said Daniel Cloherty, a Boston attorney who is chair of the District of Massachusetts CJA panel.
'They are critical to the operation of the system and they are no longer getting paid for their work,' Cloherty said. 'Many of them, not all but many, are in small firms or solo practitioners. They are small businesses that are being forced to go through a pause in payments.'
Lawyers are still continuing to take cases, Cloherty said. 'My concern is that it will become increasingly difficult to attract lawyers to do this work if this becomes a persistent problem.'
The funding pause impacts the attorneys, and also people like translators and experts paid by the court for an indigent defendant's case, Cloherty said. 'Lawyers are in a position of trying to hire vendors to assist them in the cases but I can't tell them when they are going to get paid,' he said. 'That can be a challenge.'
There's been funding issues in the past, but this is a particularly long period, the U.S. Courts statement said. 'Payments to panel attorneys have been suspended during previous congressional budget crises, but rarely for more than a few weeks in a single fiscal year,' the statement said.
While Slepchuk takes federal cases as a panel member, his law practice is diverse and he does not rely on them.
He said he knows other attorneys, however, who do depend on the cases. 'I know it's a pressing problem for them,' he said. Some attorneys are not taking cases because they don't want to 'essentially give the government an interest free loan for however many months,' Slepchuk said.
Read the original article on MassLive.
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