Federal defendants in Sacramento walked free. The reason: No paid lawyers
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Judges dismissed and delayed federal cases after months-long attorney payment lapses.
- Payment gaps stemmed from system upgrades, funding caps and a government shutdown.
- Funding shortfall risks more dismissals, docket backlog and unequal prosecution advantage.
Last year at this time, Julian Ortiz faced a possible sentence of life in federal prison for allegedly selling methamphetamine in Sacramento County.
But now Ortiz is out of the federal government’s custody, the charge against him dismissed.
His case is one of at least eight in U.S. district court in Sacramento that have been delayed or dismissed after judges ruled that a six-month gap in payments to court-appointed attorneys caused partly by the government shutdown deprived defendants of their constitutional right to competent legal representation.
“The right to effective assistance of counsel is a bedrock principle of this country,” U.S. District Judge John Mendez wrote in his November ruling dismissing the charge against Ortiz, “and is indisputably necessary for the operation of a fair criminal justice system.”
“The defendant,” he ordered a few weeks later on Dec. 8, “shall be released from custody forthwith.”
The payment problems started last June, with delays caused by a computer system upgrade that slowed remittances to the 12,000 attorneys who participate in the program nationwide. That was compounded the following month, when federal funding for the program, which had been capped at 2024 levels, ran out completely.
Then, just as payments were set to begin again, the government shut down, and the lawyers were not included in the list of essential personnel whose fees would continue to be paid.
In Sacramento, where federal courts are among the busiest in the nation, the impact was immediate and stark. Attorneys who relied on these appointments for most or all of their business found themselves unable to make mortgage payments or fund their kids’ college tuition.
But perhaps more significant was the effect on the clients that these attorneys had been appointed to represent.
In more than a dozen motions filed before judges in the Eastern District of California, which includes Sacramento, court-appointed lawyers said they did not have the money to hire investigators, paralegals or expert witnesses to prepare their cases, even as prosecutors remained fully funded. While payments have now resumed, funds are set to run out again at the end of January — the same time that yet another government shutdown could begin.
“It’s a travesty” depriving people who are accused of crimes of the right to defend themselves, said attorney Dina Santos, who represents Ortiz.
“In order to defend a case you need the assistance of a paralegal, you need an investigator to go out and gather reports, you need phone experts to examine phones and locations and data,” Santos said. “So when you go months on end without these tools at your disposal, you can’t do your job right. And if you can’t do your job right you can’t represent your client.”
The failure to pay these court-appointed lawyers has sent ripples throughout the federal justice system, said Lisa Wayne, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Attorneys throughout the country have filed motions similar to those in the Sacramento region, and some have said they will no longer work for the federal courts, she said.
In October, a federal judge in New Mexico paused a high-profile death-penalty case, ruling that failure to pay defendants’ lawyers left them unable to prepare an adequate defense, in violation of the Constitution.
While temporary funding was freed up for the attorneys earlier this year, it is set to run out again in January, and the problem is likely to begin again, she said. A second government shutdown would only add to the strain, she said.
Crowded court dockets could get worse
The lack of funding has amplified concerns that the rights of defendants may be chipped away under an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, and sends a message that poor people do not have the same rights in court as the wealthy, Wayne said.
“That is really harmful in a country where most people cannot afford to defend themselves,” she said. “The cost of an adequate defense in this country has become exorbitant.”
If such conditions continue and more judges rule that defendants’ rights have been violated, the courts’ already crowded dockets will get even slower, and pressure will also increase on state courts to prosecute crimes that the federal system is currently adjudicating, said Mary-Beth Moylan, a professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
That will slow the process down for everybody, and further burden courts at both the state and federal level, she said. It could also have a profound impact on defendants’ constitutional right to representation.
It also could mean that defendants who are innocent languish in county jails awaiting trial for months or even years longer than they otherwise would, as their cases are delayed, Moylan said.
“If we want to have a criminal justice system that provides for fairness and gets to kind of the right results, we actually do need to have adequate funding for preparation for both sides,” Moylan said. “Where you have a system that is only providing funding to the prosecution, you run up against the right to have a lawyer for the defense side that is promised by the Sixth Amendment.”
In Sacramento, the first lawyer to argue that the gap in payments presented a constitutional issue for defendants didn’t fare so well. Danica Mazenko argued on Oct. 6 that her client’s case should be dismissed because she hadn’t been paid for months, creating a conflict of interest between her need for compensation and his need for a robust defense.
Her motion received a scathing rebuke from Senior U.S. District Judge William Shubb, who said that lawyers had an obligation to represent their clients no matter the circumstances, and that taking on uncompensated or “pro bono” work was an expected part of an attorney’s work.
“Numerous federal courts have repeatedly and explicitly held that court-appointed counsel do not have any constitutional right to compensation,” Shubb wrote in his Oct. 20 order.
But the day after Mazenko filed her motion, defense attorney Todd Leras made a similar argument, adding to it the idea that the lack of funding didn’t just hurt lawyers personally — it also prevented them from constructing an adequate defense for their clients.
That reasoning made sense to Judge Daniel Calabretta, who ruled that Leras’ client, Jeremiah Salanoa, had been deprived of his constitutional right to an adequate defense under the Sixth Amendment.
“Defendant’s counsel was required to provide representation to defendant despite the fact that for months he was not provided with resources to pay for investigators, experts, and other support staff, or even to support himself,” Calabretta wrote. “To expect defendant’s counsel to adequately prepare for his client’s defense while consistently denying him the tools to do so would be, in this court’s view, not only unconscionable, but also unconstitutional.”
Because the government was set to re-open by the time Calabretta issued his ruling, the judge decided not to dismiss the drug charges against Salanoa outright, but rather to delay any further hearings or court proceedings until Leras felt that he was able to mount a robust defense.
Calabretta has issued similar rulings with regard to at least six defendants in recent weeks, all of them represented by attorneys paid under the federal Criminal Justice Act, or CJA.
“Defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated by the monthslong failure to provide adequate funding for defendant’s counsel,” he wrote in the case of defendant Leo Alonzo-Medina, who faces five drug and firearms charges in federal court. Referencing his ruling in the Salanoa case, Calabretta said that Alonzo-Medina’s lawyer would also be allowed as much time as necessary to prepare a defense.
Paying prosecutors but not defenders
Failing to pay defense attorneys effectively tilted the system in favor of the prosecution, whose offices remained funded after the money ran out for the defense panels, said Sacramento attorney David Fischer, whose client was among those granted a continuance due to constitutional violations.
In one of his cases, Fischer said, work was interrupted because an investigator could not travel to research a case without pay. In another, numerous interviews needed to be conducted in Spanish, and he could not pay a translator, Fischer said.
“The prosecution was still being paid — they were still fully funded,” Fischer said. “So you have a system where the government on one side is fully funded, and the defense side was defunded.”
That, he argued, created a structural imbalance that deprived defendants of their rights.
“It’s very upsetting that there is really no interest in making sure that the defense side is fully funded and has adequate resources,” Fischer said.
The federal judiciary has estimated that it will cost about $116 million more per year to adequately fund the pool of court-appointed lawyers in the system. But thus far, the federal budget still calls for funding at 2024 levels.
As a result, judges may continue to delay or dismiss cases, but those solutions are imperfect, experts say. Ortiz, for example, still faces several firearms charges in state court, records show. He did not appear at hearings because he was in federal custody and unable to attend.
In a case that Fischer is involved in, one defendant is out on bail, but another remains in custody, even though both were found to have their rights violated.
And while delaying cases will give defendants’ attorneys more time and resources, it also could mean that those who are innocent or eligible for shorter sentences could languish in custody, waiting for the process to start up again.
“It takes months, if not years, to prepare for these cases,” Santos said.
This story was originally published December 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Federal defendants in Sacramento walked free. The reason: No paid lawyers."
