Michigan indigent defense commission outlines standards, grants and staffing needs

Kristen Staley, executive director of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission (MIDC), told the House Appropriations Subcommittee that the agency has spent the past several years building statewide minimum standards for trial-level public defense and distributing grant funds to help local systems meet those standards.

Staley said the MIDC was created under the MIDC Act (Public Act 02/2013) to ensure Michigan meets the constitutional requirements established by Gideon v. Wainwright and related authority. She described the commission's core responsibilities as developing and overseeing minimum standards for public defense, administering grants to local trial-court funding units, monitoring grant spending and compliance, collecting program data and encouraging best practices.

The agency implements nine minimum standards based on American Bar Association national best practices, Staley said, including requirements for attorney education, client contact timelines, use of investigative and expert services, counsel presence at critical stages, independence of defense systems from the judiciary, workload (case-cap) limits and minimum compensation guidelines. Staley said the standards are intended to reduce geographic disparities in defense services and to limit attorney overload that undermines zealous advocacy.

MIDC funding comes primarily from the state general fund, Staley said, with local systems required by statute to maintain a local share. For fiscal year 2025 she said local shares total about $38.8 million and state grants from the general fund were roughly $258.3 million; the agency also estimates roughly $300,000 in annual attorney-fee collections in systems that collect them.

Staley described implementation progress since grants began flowing in 2019: 133 local trial-court funding units choose how to comply; the MIDC has helped create 35 public defender offices covering 40 counties; just over 1,700 attorneys now accept public-defense cases (about 4 percent of licensed active attorneys) and those attorneys handle roughly 85 percent of criminal cases at the trial level. She said council-at-first-appearance programs expanded statewide and that, in the prior year, more than 295,000 people were provided counsel at first appearance (about 86 percent of arraignments).

Staley said MIDC grant dollars have supported new positions such as managers, full-time investigators, social workers embedded in defense offices and increased use of non-attorney experts. She said expert usage rose by about 41 percent year over year and that many grant-funded initiatives aim to reduce wrongful convictions, improve individualized sentencing outcomes and lower incarceration costs.

On program operations, Staley described a small central staff (18 authorized FTEs, with statutory authorization up to 21) that provides regional field managers, grants oversight (including CPA-contracted audits), training and research. She told the committee the agency is requesting four additional FTEs next year to support financial and compliance oversight, technical assistance and attorney training oversight.

Staley also discussed MIDC's 'work projects' account, which holds funds rolled from unexpended local grant balances to reimburse local systems for unpredictable high-cost cases or other unanticipated expenses. She said work-project funds are typically subject to four-year use windows and that a portion is reserved for costs tied to recent Michigan Supreme Court decisions requiring retrials or resentencing; she estimated about 200 individuals statewide could require retrial or resentencing related to juvenile life-without-parole decisions and estimated approximately $40,000 per such case for investigative and expert services.

In committee questions, representatives sought additional detail about pay parity with prosecutors, whether MIDC standards regulate local pay, whether MIDC can or should 'control' attorney compensation to mirror free-market rates, and how MIDC allocates and uses work-project funds. Staley said MIDC's attorney-compensation standard is statutorily mandated to prevent a disincentive to accept indigent-defense work; she described the standard as tied to state pay schedules (comparable to assistant attorney general pay grades) and said minimum rates remain substantially below typical retained-counsel hourly rates.

Staley clarified that MIDC grants have helped raise pay in some places where appointed counsel previously earned very low fees and that MIDC can provide additional funding in higher-cost labor markets to maintain rosters where federal defender offices or other market forces push pay higher.

Staley also confirmed that, under United States v. Padilla and related authority, indigent-defense counsel is required for people brought before the courts regardless of immigration status; she referenced Michigan Supreme Court activity affecting juvenile life-without-parole sentencing as a source of expected retrial-related expenditures.

The presentation noted ongoing efforts to measure outcomes, including reductions in pretrial incarceration and increased rates of release without bail when counsel is present at first appearance. Staley said Michigan-specific analyses indicate that every dollar spent hiring public defenders to reduce caseloads produces more than $6 in incarceration-cost savings by reducing wrongful convictions and disproportionate sentencing.

The MIDC presentation concluded with Staley's statement that the commission is continuing implementation work, monitoring local compliance, and evaluating an active bill in the Legislature led by Representative Lightner that would expand MIDC'style standards to youth defense services.