With Congress poised for a budget fight in the next two weeks, lawyers working in the federal public defender system came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to make their case for restoring nearly $51 million cut from the system this year.
“We are in crisis,” Cait Clarke, chief officer in the U.S. courts’ Office of Defender Services, said during a panel discussion attended by Representatives John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.). The federal defenders could absorb another 10 percent budget cut during the fiscal year that begins on October 1, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which organized the discussion.
