Correction appended
“You have the right to an attorney”—it’s basic info well known to anyone who’s worn the cuffs a time or two. In the good ol’ U.S. of A., you have a right to a lawyer, even if you can’t afford one. But in Virginia, the system that provides counsel to the state’s poorest defendants has long lagged behind in what it pays some of the state’s most essential attorneys.
 Does it pay to be nice? No, but we’re getting closer. Thanks to this year’s Criminal Justice Funding Package in the state budget, Charlottesville public defenders like Jim Hingeley will get a long overdue raise for their representation of the indigent. |
Virginia currently ranks lowest in funding it allows for court-appointed defense lawyers. And, with a salary gap of as much as 25 percent, pay for public defenders is far lower than the salaries of their prosecutorial counterparts, Commonwealth’s attorneys.
“There isn’t any law that says there has to be parity,” Charlottesville public defender Jim Hingeley says, “but…the roles of prosecutors and public defenders are very similar. There doesn’t appear to be a rational reason for paying public defenders less.”
Lower salaries for public defenders result in high turnover—last year the rate was 27 percent. One third of public defenders statewide are in their first year of law practice.
Dave Johnson with the Indigent Defense Commission says, “There are a lot of people who want to do this kind of work. …We had just fallen so far off the curve with salaries, especially in the world of student loans. [Young lawyers] can’t even make interest payments on what we were paying them.”
Another shortfall: Court appointed attorneys don’t get paid for all the time it takes to work on cases. State law currently allows $90 per hour for court-appointed attorneys, but fee caps were set at $158 for misdemeanor cases, $445 for felonies and $1,235 for a felony punishable by more than 20 years. The rates allow less than two hours for misdemeanors and less than 14 hours for serious felony cases—pretty pressing deadlines for mounting any kind of fair defense.
So, this year, after pressing from a commission including public defenders, Virginia Supreme Court staff and members of the Virginia Fair Trial Project, the Governor’s budget included the 2007 Criminal Justice Funding Package.
It provides $9 million for increased fee waivers for court-appointed attorneys and $3.6 million for public defenders. With a 4 percent increase provided this year for all state employees, public defenders will see a 13 percent increase in salaries overall. That brings the entry-level salary for a public defender to $55,234 from $48,880. Deputy public defenders can now earn as much as $72,862, making this good-hearted work a little better.
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Correction, May 7, 2007:
Due to a reporting error in “More money for fair trials,” Courts & Crime News, May 1, 2007, we incorrectly stated that the entry-level salary for a Virginia public defender was raised to $55,234 from $48,880. In fact, that is the salary for a level “II,” or experienced public defender. Entry-level public defenders make $48,183, up from $42,640.
