With no money to pay defense lawyers, alarms sound in NC federal courts
.jpg "The Charles R. Jonas Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse")
Their work is mandated by the Constitution, but their pay has been shorted by Congress.
The money used to pay private attorneys appointed to represent defendants in Charlotte, North Carolina and across the U.S. federal courts has run out. The lack of funds is expected to delay pay by three months and threaten access to interpreters and investigators amid immigration raids, said John Baker, the top federal public defender for the Western District of North Carolina.
Most immediately, one attorney representative said, the shortage is edging lawyers toward a difficult decision: Do I pay my light bill, or do I go see my client?
Delayed pay means these lawyers must pay costs like $169 for virtual visits and expert analyses without knowing when the government will reimburse them.
Court leaders say the question that follows — Can I keep taking these cases? — could threaten the whole system.
In federal courts, about 90% of defendants can’t afford to hire a lawyer. So, as mandated under Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the court appoints one.
In Charlotte, federal public defenders who dedicate all their time to those cases represent about half of those people, Baker said.
But sometimes his office cannot take a case. It is either overrun by a 20% increase in cases and a nearly two-year hiring freeze, or it has a conflict of interest. So, the other 50% of cases go to private lawyers who opt in — usually out of a sense of duty, Baker said — to be on a list of attorneys judges may appoint.
Mekka Jeffers-Nelson, a representative for lawyers on that list in the western district, remembered a 2017 case with nearly 90 co-defendants related to the Bloods gang. Public defenders could only represent one defendant, so 89 private attorneys were called in.
“If we start losing attorneys, it could really put us in a bad position,” she said. “We still have clients that need to be represented. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is still prosecuting cases ... and despite the delay of payments, the work still continues.”
Defense attorneys work without pay
Every fiscal year, Congress allocates funds to be distributed through the judicial branch. A part of the judiciary called Defender Services is in charge of funneling that money to federal public defenders offices and a group referred to as Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys. Those are the private court-appointed attorneys.
Last year, Defender Services received $1.45 billion.
That was $129 million less than what was needed, according to a federal judiciary news release.
Baker and the state’s other two federal public defenders — Alan DuBois and Louis Allen — sent a letter Tuesday morning to North Carolina’s federal lawmakers, asking for more than $115 million to pay private attorneys across the country.
About a third of court-appointed lawyers in Middle District of North Carolina decided to drop off the list of court-appointed lawyers, according to the letter.
“I‘m scared to tell you the truth. I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long time .... since 2000,” said Renae Alt-Summers, who represents lawyers who take indigent clients across South Carolina. “I’ve lived through some shutdowns and some deferments. ... this is the first time that I have felt like it could really crash.”
And any issues in district courts eventually trickle into appellate courts, like the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, said James Kilbourne, an appellate defense lawyer.
If lawyers are paying their own way through cases, they could be unable to hire interpreters for Spanish-speaking clients or investigators in fraud cases, he said. And there’s a “100% chance” problems like those would result in a hearing in appellate court, according to Kilbourne.
The judicial system is like a car, he said. You have to have a judge, a jury, a prosecutor and a defense attorney.
“If you don’t have an adequate, well-trained, well-qualified defense attorney who’s willing to defend folks in federal court,” he said, “you’re like a car with three wheels. You’re not going anywhere.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
