DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710130056

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   60 lines

VIRGINIA IS RANKED LAST AMONG STATES IN PAY TO PUBLIC DEFENDERS

Don't complain to Virginia's public defenders about high lawyer fees: The state's court-appointed attorneys are the lowest-paid in the nation.

State law caps the amount public defenders can receive, forcing them to spend large amounts of time on serious felony cases that can pay at rates averaging less than the hourly minimum wage.

``They are so grossly underpaid that it's really unbelievable,'' said Clifton A. Woodrum, a Democratic state lawmaker from Roanoke who is chairman of the Virginia Crime Commission, which is studying the problem.

Lawyers appointed to represent indigent felony defendants are paid $60 an hour for their work in the courtroom and $40 per hour for work outside the courtroom. That fee is comparable to other states.

Under Virginia law, however, the most lawyers can receive for the gravest felony charge is $575, and $265 for felonies that carry less than 20 years in prison. Fees for misdemeanors range from $100 to $132.

The legislature this year approved raising the cap to $735 next July, but Virginia still will remain well behind all other states. Virginia is the only state where the maximum fee is less than $1,000 and cannot be waived, except for crimes punishable by death.

According to a nationwide survey for the American Bar Association, several states, including Maryland, Tennessee and Mississippi, set the cap at $1,000, but the limit can be waived when court-appointed defenders show in court that they have worked excessive hours or incurred high expenses.

Vermont, Rhode Island and Kansas have the highest maximums at $5,000, and those caps can all be waived for lawyers who show extraordinary expenses.

Seventeen states have no maximum. In nine states, the amount varies from community to community, according to the ABA analysis by the Spangenberg Group, a consulting firm in West Newton, Mass.

Del. John J. Davies, a Democrat, is an attorney who used to take court-appointed cases. In one case, he had to hire an expert in appealing a murder case, and the court granted him no extra money.

``I thought the (defendant) was nutty as a fruitcake, but I didn't have the resources to be able to explore that,'' he said. ``I got paid less than a buck an hour for that case.''

The disparity alarms some lawmakers, who fear that inmates who had court-appointed lawyers might successfully challenge their convictions on grounds of inadequate counsel.

The issue already has appeared in courts in Virginia and other states.

In 1995, Chesapeake lawyer Christopher P. Shema asked a Norfolk judge to find the pay rate unconstitutional after he got $575 per defendant for a drug case. Witnesses testified he would have made at least $15,000 on a normal attorney pay schedule.

Circuit Judge John C. Morrison Jr. ruled that it was the legislature's responsibility to change the law, but called the pay cap ``reprehensibly and shamefully low.''

In 1990, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that low pay caps are illegal in that state because they deprive lawyers of property and damage their practices.

The court said the ``taking (of a lawyer's services) without adequate compensation is analogous to taking the goods of merchants.'' KEYWORDS: RANKING PUBLIC DEFENDER SALARIES

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu