Criminal Justice Act — Judicial Business 2021
The Criminal Justice Act (CJA) provides funding for the representation of individuals with limited financial resources in federal criminal proceedings. In each district, a plan exists for providing representation through private panel attorneys and, where established, federal public or community defender organizations. This year, 81 federal defender organizations (64 federal public defender organizations and 17 community defender organizations) served 91 of the 94 federal judicial districts.
A total of 145,726 representations by counsel under the CJA were opened, a decrease of 23 percent compared with last year. The reduction in representations has been attributed mainly to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighty-four percent of all federal judicial districts had lower caseloads. The largest percentage declines occurred in the Southern District of Texas (down 52 percent), the District of New Mexico (down 51 percent), the Southern District of California (down 41 percent), the Middle District of Louisiana (down 38 percent), and the Western District of Texas (down 36 percent). The largest percentage increase was in the Eastern District of Oklahoma (up 42 percent), where the decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, 591 U.S., 140 S. Ct. 2452 (2020), shifted the jurisdiction over many offenses involving Native Americans on reservation lands from state court to federal court.
Representations closed by the 81 federal public and community defender organizations (including representations in criminal matters, appeals, and habeas corpus proceedings) dropped 20 percent from the previous year to 87,353. Representations closed by appointed panel attorneys fell 21 percent to 60,807. The reduction largely resulted from a decline in illegal entry immigration cases that began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and continued thereafter; most of these cases involved misdemeanors and required relatively limited resources to adjudicate. As the impact of the pandemic caused more representations to be opened than closed, the backlog of representations increased.
The number of private attorneys paid through the CJA panel attorney payment system was 7,337.
For a summary of federal defender appointments under the CJA for the past five years, see Table S-21. For information on representations for each federal public and community defender organization, see Table K-1.