Legislature gives help to indigent defenders

By CHELYEN DAVIS

Date published: 3/12/2007

By CHELYEN DAVIS

RICHMOND

The General Assembly budgeted $8 million in additional money for court-appointed attorneys, who in Virginia are the lowest-paid in the nation. It's not a lot of money, but the legislature also passed a bill allowing judges to waive the caps on fees paid to court-appointed attorneys, which is being heralded as a big improvement.

There's also a provision to collect information from lawyers on how many hours they really work on court-appointed cases, so there will be data to help determine how much money the system needs in the future.

These are critical improvements to the court-appointed side of Virginia's indigent-defense system, said Betsy Edwards of the Virginia Fair Trial Project.

"It's a big public policy decision that we think is fantastic," Edwards said. "We're very excited about what's happened in this session. It's a great step in the right direction."

In Virginia, attorneys who accept indigent cases are paid $90 an hour by the state, but the state also limits the number of hours they are paid for--less than two hours for low-end misdemeanors, even though it can take numerous hours to adequately investigate and prepare a defense for even a misdemeanor.

Those hourly limits mean that a lawyer defending a misdemeanor really gets about $120 total, regardless of how complex it might turn out to be.

Lawyers might have to make multiple court appearances and need time to interview witnesses and their own clients--things that will take far more than the hour and a half they're being paid for.

Even court-appointed lawyers defending people on serious felony charges--which could get the defendant 20 years to life in prison--get only a little over $1,000. Only capital cases, those that could result in the death penalty, have no cap on fees.

Lawyers have long decried those caps, saying that attorneys who take court-appointed cases lose money and indigent defendants don't always get the best representation that way.

Adding $8 million to the pot of money--currently at $58 million--that pays those fees isn't a lot, Edwards said, but it is the most the legislature has given to court-appointed attorneys in years. Gov. Tim Kaine has proposed giving $9 million; the $8 million figure was the legislature's compromise.

What's more critical, Edwards said, is that now lawyers will be able to petition judges for a waiver of the caps, in cases where lawyers feel they did a lot of work.

The legislature also made some changes to the other side of Virginia's indigent-defense system--the public defenders.

There are 25 public defender offices in the state to take on indigent cases. Court-appointed attorneys take the cases where there isn't a public defender office, or when the public defender's office has a conflict.

The General Assembly took the following action to help provide more funding for indigent-defense lawyers: Budgeted $8 million in additional money for court-appointed attorneys Gave judges the authority to waive the caps on fees paid to court-appointed attorneys in complicated or lengthy cases Set up a system to monitor how many hours lawyers spend working on court-appointed cases Provided public defenders with 13 percent raises

Date published: 3/12/2007

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