The sad thing is that the caps imposed by the Legislature still leave us as one of the lowest paying States.
Indigent representation by court appointed counsel jumped 17.4% in one year from 193,352 people to 227,058 people. Not sure what the cause of that is. The courts have actually been able to get $4.5 million in fees paid out (7.8%) back from clients who were convicted. I'd guess this is from people desperately trying to pay off their fines/costs so they might someday be able to get their licenses back (from my perspective, we seem to take your license if you sneeze the wrong way in Virginia).
Disturbing: If the number of people represented by court appointed counsel has risen 17.4% one can extrapolate that a similar jump has probably occured in numbers represented by public defenders. Yet we see little or no rise in funds to the public defender offices over the last five years. One might suspect that the offices are set up to save money and then not given increases in funding and/or manpower even if the workload rises.
