Federal criminal cases must be dismissed if defendants lack lawyers, guilty or not. Without government funding to pay defense counsel, attorneys won't take the cases — and that funding gap isn't due to the shutdown.

In July, Congress declined to fund the Criminal Justice Act, which pays private attorneys to defend indigent federal defendants when public defenders are unavailable — and, by and large, there aren't enough public defenders.

KOAT legal expert John Day said the ramifications of Congress's refusal to replenish these funds do much more than deprive lawyers of money. They will deprive those accused of crimes their constitutional right to a lawyer, whether they can afford one or not.

"The danger is a lot of cases will get dismissed because the federal judges will have no choice b

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