The judiciary rang the alarm on Tuesday that funding has been exhausted for the private attorneys who represent indigent federal criminal defendants, and this predicament is expected to last for three months.

Funds for these attorneys, appointed under the Criminal Justice Act, who supplement the work of federal defenders, ran out on July 3. The funds were used up several weeks earlier than the Judicial Conference of the U.S. initially warned about in April.

"The funding crisis has prompted concern throughout the federal judiciary that many of these private lawyers, known as panel attorneys, could decline new cases," the federal judiciary said in a news release on Tuesday. "Over 90% of defendants in federal criminal cases have court-appointed counsel because they cannot afford their own lawyer."

Federal defender organizations handle about 60% of these cases and the other 40% are assigned to private defense lawyers appointed under the Criminal Justice Act, the release said.

Some of the attorneys "continue to work but are not getting paid, which obviously is a tremendous hardship, especially for small firms and solo practitioners," U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel of the Southern District of New York, who chairs the Judicial Conference's defender services committee, was quoted as saying in the release.

A continuing resolution enacted in March kept the judicial branch at its fiscal 2024 level, which was frozen at the fiscal 2023 level. 

The judiciary says it needs $116 million in supplemental funding to resolve the delayed payments and prevent further delays. The appropriations process for fiscal 2026 is currently underway, ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline.

"There are more than 12,000 private panel attorneys throughout the country who accept [Criminal Justice Act] assignments annually," the judiciary said. "About 85% of them work for small firms or are solo practitioners who can ill afford long delays in payments for their work."

The federal defender organizations are "already seriously understaffed" and have been in a hiring freeze for 17 of the last 24 months, so they aren't able to take up the work, according to the judiciary. The funding crisis is also affecting the hiring of investigators, expert witnesses and interpreters who are employed by the defense attorneys.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and former public defender, told Law360 on Tuesday that the situation is "appalling" and said he would be working to remedy this in the appropriations process, as he's done in the past.

"We have to have a strong public defense to have any confidence in the judicial system," he said.

--Editing by Karin Roberts.