Appointed attorneys to be paid through March 1st
Last Friday the Commission on Indigent Defense met and decided to pay vouchers of appointed attorneys through March 1st of this year. This means that we will not be arguing motions to halt the prosecutions and to release pre-trial detainees in upcoming trials, at least until March 1st.
However, the funding crisis has not been resolved. The Commission is not saying that it will pay vouchers after March 1st, and no additional money has been appropriated as of yet. The governor and the legislature has repeatedly said that there will be no additional funding in the upcoming year and that further cuts are likely. Because the motions to continue appointed cases are temporarily moot, it falls on anyone who has a voice in the legislature to educate our lawmakers as to the importance of funding indigent defense, and why this is not discretionary funding that can be cut when times are hard economically.
Public defender office budgets have been cut, and offices that were woefully understaffed to begin with are now cutting back even further to accomodate the budget cuts. Our solicitor's office employees inform me that the prosecutors' budgets have been cut as well (what this means exactly I am not sure - considering that prosecutors outnumber public defenders, the prosecutors are not taking cuts in their salaries, and they have alternative sources of funding such as forfeitures and the money that they rake in from the pre-trial intervention program).
Related posts:
South Carolina attorneys ask courts to halt prosecutions until State comes up with funding
S.C. Bar releases statement in response to suspension of legal fees for court-appointed attorneys
Indigent defense - ethics
Indigent defense - what can be done
S.C. indigent defenders have dropped the ball
Indigent defense - SCCID suspends payments to Rule 608 appointed lawyers
No funding for indigent defense?
