Since Defender Services represents defendants, not cases, the district court defendant data are more appropriate than case data in comparing district court and Defender Services workloads. 5). 6). Other criminal representations closed declined 7 percent between fiscal years 1990 and 1993. Cost Per Representation Closed Has Grown for All Types of Defender Services Attorneys

For each fiscal year 1990 through 1993, panel attorney costs per representation closed were the highest and CDO costs the lowest. 8). In 1992 almost 4,000 cases, or 36 percent of all drug cases, involved multiple defendants. While the number of death penalty cases in federal courts has increased, the lack of a reliable death penalty identifier in the database precluded an accurate measure of the increase. Specifically, we were asked to assess, for fiscal years 1990 to 1993 and the first half of 1994: the causes of the growth in overall Defender Services workload and costs, including the reasons that Defender Services workload has grown faster than district court criminal cases; the comparative costs of representations closed provided by FDOs and panel attorneys and, if the FDO costs were lower, what actions the federal judiciary was taking to increase the use of FDOs; the additional costs of paying standard higher hourly rates to panel attorneys in all or parts of 16 districts; and the causes of the increased workload and costs of the DPRCs, including whether the DPRCs had helped to reduce or contain the costs of panel attorney death penalty representations.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Defender Services program, focusing on: (1) the causes of the program's increased workload and costs; and (2) whether death penalty resource centers (DPRC) have reduced the federal costs of representing indigent defendants in death penalty cases.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) the Defender Services program represents individual defendants rather than cases and during fiscal years (FY) 1990 through 1993 there was an average of 1.4 defendants per criminal case filed; (2) the Defender Services program workload has grown and costs have increased because the number of defendants have increased and the cases have become more complex, resulting in more work for attorneys in each case; (3) there was insufficient data to determine why overall program costs doubled and DPRC costs tripled between FY 1990 and FY 1993; (4) federal public defender and community defender organization representations cost less than panel attorney representations, although the cost advantage has gradually declined; and (5) death penalty representations accounted for 0.6 percent of all panel attorney representations closed in FY 1993, but accounted for 8.7 percent of all panel attorney payments.