By Scott Bomboy
January 3, 2014
U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
(Photo courtesy theguardian.com)
As a new year starts, the Chief Justice of the United States and top officials in the federal court system continue to warn about budget cuts that will make it harder for people to have access to public defenders.
Chief Justice John Roberts has repeated warnings he issued in 2012 about the lack of funding for the federal court system, which he helps to oversee. Those warnings came about three weeks after similar requests from two top officials at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
On December 5, 2013, Judges John D. Bates and Julia S. Gibbons wrote Congress about the dire need for more funds for a federal court system that was strained before mandated sequester cuts took effect after the 2013 budget battle in Congress.
“Sequestration cuts to the Defender Systems program threaten the ability of the Judiciary to provide court-appointed for persons accused of a federal crime,” said Gibbons and Bates, who said that federal defender programs were cut by 11 percent during the sequester period last year.
About 90 percent of people in federal criminal cases use court-appointed counsel.
The letter was issued just before a budget deal was reached in Congress to restore some funding to government agencies.
In the budget deal cut by Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray, some money for the next two years will be coming back to discretionary programs run by federal agencies. But the amount of funds restored will be decided by appropriations committees in Congress in mid-January.
And that isn’t enough to satisfy Chief Justice Roberts, who spelled out his concerns in a 15-page report issued on New Year’s Eve.
Among the arguments made by the Chief Justice to Congress is the fact that most federal court spending is on programs mandated by law, and the federal justice system just doesn’t have many discretionary programs to cut. In fact, it will need to cut its budget by 3 percent to accommodate “must pay” programs- before funds are restored from the sequester.
“Those cuts would lead to the loss of an estimated additional 1,000 court staff. The first consequence would be greater delays in resolving civil and criminal cases,” Roberts said. “In the civil and bankruptcy venues, further consequences would include commercial uncertainty, lost opportunities, and unvindicated rights. In the criminal venues, those consequences pose a genuine threat to public safety.”