By Liz Nass
Gongwer News Service
Judiciary officials are hoping the 2026-27 fiscal year budget can gaps in staff and historical underfunding to continue court services, according to testimony before a Senate panel on Thursday.
The State Appellant Defender Office, the Court of Appeals and the Judicial Tenure System all requested an increase in funding or converting one-time funding to permanent to address caseloads and the lack of staff in their offices. Representatives for each entity appeared before the Senate Appropriations Corrections and Judiciary Subcommittee on Thursday.
Under the governor’s executive recommendation, the judiciary would see $391.3 million ($283.2 million in General Fund), a 2% increase (2.6% General Fund).
The State Appellate Defender’s Office would see $23.4 million to support indigent criminal defendants overall but also help with the caseload demands of the juvenile lifers resentencing requirements under the 2025 Michigan Supreme Court decisions in People v. Czarnecki and People v. Taylor with a recommendation to add 14 employees allocated this past fiscal year in one-time appropriation as permanent attorneys in the unit.
Marilena David, director of the office, said the office has hired all 14 attorneys since the budget was passed in October to immediately answer the workload of resentencing 582 cases.
Since then, they have assigned counsel for 332 cases, leaving 250 still awaiting counsel. The office is prioritizing those that have 34 years or more in prison that are immediately available for parole based on the 25-to-40-year sentence minimum under the new court decisions.
In the last five months, 37 individuals were resentenced in the juvenile lifer unit, 22 from the 18-year-old group and 15 from the 19-to-20-year-old group. All the individuals resentenced served between 40 and 50 years.
The resentencing process saved the state $14.5 million in avoided incarceration costs, David said.
David told Gongwer News Service after the subcommittee that the end goal past just upholding those 14 spots permanently this year would be 27 employees in the unit to handle the caseloads.
If the 14 positions are not upheld, David said, then it would be “complete chaos” because those attorneys have clients already, preparing hearings and requesting records, needing to scramble. If the 27 do not come eventually through, then they would just have to make it work with the attorneys they have now.
“As soon as we resolve a case, we’ll take another, represent another client, so we’re going to be able to make it work,” David said. “Our first priority is we really need to have some stability there for the people that have already started the work. It will be a waste of resources if we find out they have to go and these clients have nowhere to go, and their cases have already started.”
She said the process looks like it could last years, as some of their attorneys are still working on clients from juvenile cases from the earlier Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana cases from 2016 for 18-year-olds.
David also emphasized the importance of the request for an additional $1.2 million for the Michigan Appellate Assigned Counsel attorneys requested on top of $3.2 million already allocated to administer the system for appointing criminal appellate counsel in all Michigan circuit courts and appointing counsel for youth in juvenile court, which represents 75% of people annually.
She said it is one of the corners of the indigent defense system that lacks access to state resources. Currently, the system is only reimbursed for half the cost of reasonable hourly attorney fees, and the fund is “not sustainable.”
Representation capacity is also a budget priority for SADO, requesting 17 new employees and $3.1 million. The executive budget only recommended three employees and $720,000.
In fiscal year 2025, SADO received $3.2 million for 23 employees as requested, but then requested $2.3 million for 12 employees for fiscal year 2026 and did not receive any funding.
“We have court orders that we are not following because the courts are ordering counsel for these people,” David said. “We do simply do not have attorneys for everybody to have counsel. It is a growing crisis, too. This is not a backlog situation. This is a thing that is ongoing given increased cases that are coming down the pipe and also given the decrease in the amount of lawyers, frankly, that are doing this very highly specialized work at low pay.”
In 2024, 96 people were without counsel in appellate cases. Now, in 2026, it’s grown to 226 people, David said. Currently, SADO attorneys have a caseload of over 21 cases while the standard recommendation is around 15 cases.
SADO is also losing people at an increased rate, David said, with 13 attorneys leaving between 2024 and 2026 compared to four attorneys leaving between 2022 and 2023. David said they hired 17 people since January 2024, but it simply isn’t enough to keep up with the vacancies.
She said, overall, this creates a violation of the constitutional right to counsel, in which around 700 people are without counsel in the whole appellate process.
“It’s really difficult for the attorneys, sure,” David said. “It’s terrible for the clients because when they have attorneys who are overworked, who can’t get to their files on time, it’s creating all sorts of systemic errors that we are going to have to pay for later because appeals will be delayed. There will be appeals on appeals. Substitution cases take a really long time. It’s really impacting the system in a great way.”
Court of Appeals Chief Judge Michael Gadola said the court expects an increase of $650,000 with the governor’s recommendation, which he said represents less than one half of 1% of their General Fund expenditures.
In the last year, Gadola said the court has bounced back in the number of new filings after a dip during COVID-19 and directly following.
He said the court has also been challenged by judges on leave due to illness and vacancies. The court had just reached full strength last year when Judge Kirsten Frank Kelly announced her retirement and Judge Christopher Yates to leave soon, putting additional stress on staffing and filling those holes.
Another challenge of the court is the high turnover in the court’s research division, with 20 of their lawyers leaving them in the last year out of 26 positions. Although may have been replaced, Gadola said it “severely impacted our ability to process the cases in a more timely fashion.”
Another important piece of the budget was one-time appropriation for an editor in the Office of Reporter of Decisions that was deleted from the recommendation, Gadola said. He said this would be necessary to add back in because they were just picking up backlog from decisions.
Glenn Page, member of the Judicial Tenure Commission, highlighted making three of their limited term staff members permanent to “get qualified people to take a job without guarantee that they’re able to have a job by the end of September.” This one-time funding was removed from the governor’s recommendation.
Gongwer News Service
Judiciary officials are hoping the 2026-27 fiscal year budget can gaps in staff and historical underfunding to continue court services, according to testimony before a Senate panel on Thursday.
The State Appellant Defender Office, the Court of Appeals and the Judicial Tenure System all requested an increase in funding or converting one-time funding to permanent to address caseloads and the lack of staff in their offices. Representatives for each entity appeared before the Senate Appropriations Corrections and Judiciary Subcommittee on Thursday.
Under the governor’s executive recommendation, the judiciary would see $391.3 million ($283.2 million in General Fund), a 2% increase (2.6% General Fund).
The State Appellate Defender’s Office would see $23.4 million to support indigent criminal defendants overall but also help with the caseload demands of the juvenile lifers resentencing requirements under the 2025 Michigan Supreme Court decisions in People v. Czarnecki and People v. Taylor with a recommendation to add 14 employees allocated this past fiscal year in one-time appropriation as permanent attorneys in the unit.
Marilena David, director of the office, said the office has hired all 14 attorneys since the budget was passed in October to immediately answer the workload of resentencing 582 cases.
Since then, they have assigned counsel for 332 cases, leaving 250 still awaiting counsel. The office is prioritizing those that have 34 years or more in prison that are immediately available for parole based on the 25-to-40-year sentence minimum under the new court decisions.
In the last five months, 37 individuals were resentenced in the juvenile lifer unit, 22 from the 18-year-old group and 15 from the 19-to-20-year-old group. All the individuals resentenced served between 40 and 50 years.
The resentencing process saved the state $14.5 million in avoided incarceration costs, David said.
David told Gongwer News Service after the subcommittee that the end goal past just upholding those 14 spots permanently this year would be 27 employees in the unit to handle the caseloads.
If the 14 positions are not upheld, David said, then it would be “complete chaos” because those attorneys have clients already, preparing hearings and requesting records, needing to scramble. If the 27 do not come eventually through, then they would just have to make it work with the attorneys they have now.
“As soon as we resolve a case, we’ll take another, represent another client, so we’re going to be able to make it work,” David said. “Our first priority is we really need to have some stability there for the people that have already started the work. It will be a waste of resources if we find out they have to go and these clients have nowhere to go, and their cases have already started.”
She said the process looks like it could last years, as some of their attorneys are still working on clients from juvenile cases from the earlier Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana cases from 2016 for 18-year-olds.
David also emphasized the importance of the request for an additional $1.2 million for the Michigan Appellate Assigned Counsel attorneys requested on top of $3.2 million already allocated to administer the system for appointing criminal appellate counsel in all Michigan circuit courts and appointing counsel for youth in juvenile court, which represents 75% of people annually.
She said it is one of the corners of the indigent defense system that lacks access to state resources. Currently, the system is only reimbursed for half the cost of reasonable hourly attorney fees, and the fund is “not sustainable.”
Representation capacity is also a budget priority for SADO, requesting 17 new employees and $3.1 million. The executive budget only recommended three employees and $720,000.
In fiscal year 2025, SADO received $3.2 million for 23 employees as requested, but then requested $2.3 million for 12 employees for fiscal year 2026 and did not receive any funding.
“We have court orders that we are not following because the courts are ordering counsel for these people,” David said. “We do simply do not have attorneys for everybody to have counsel. It is a growing crisis, too. This is not a backlog situation. This is a thing that is ongoing given increased cases that are coming down the pipe and also given the decrease in the amount of lawyers, frankly, that are doing this very highly specialized work at low pay.”
In 2024, 96 people were without counsel in appellate cases. Now, in 2026, it’s grown to 226 people, David said. Currently, SADO attorneys have a caseload of over 21 cases while the standard recommendation is around 15 cases.
SADO is also losing people at an increased rate, David said, with 13 attorneys leaving between 2024 and 2026 compared to four attorneys leaving between 2022 and 2023. David said they hired 17 people since January 2024, but it simply isn’t enough to keep up with the vacancies.
She said, overall, this creates a violation of the constitutional right to counsel, in which around 700 people are without counsel in the whole appellate process.
“It’s really difficult for the attorneys, sure,” David said. “It’s terrible for the clients because when they have attorneys who are overworked, who can’t get to their files on time, it’s creating all sorts of systemic errors that we are going to have to pay for later because appeals will be delayed. There will be appeals on appeals. Substitution cases take a really long time. It’s really impacting the system in a great way.”
Court of Appeals Chief Judge Michael Gadola said the court expects an increase of $650,000 with the governor’s recommendation, which he said represents less than one half of 1% of their General Fund expenditures.
In the last year, Gadola said the court has bounced back in the number of new filings after a dip during COVID-19 and directly following.
He said the court has also been challenged by judges on leave due to illness and vacancies. The court had just reached full strength last year when Judge Kirsten Frank Kelly announced her retirement and Judge Christopher Yates to leave soon, putting additional stress on staffing and filling those holes.
Another challenge of the court is the high turnover in the court’s research division, with 20 of their lawyers leaving them in the last year out of 26 positions. Although may have been replaced, Gadola said it “severely impacted our ability to process the cases in a more timely fashion.”
Another important piece of the budget was one-time appropriation for an editor in the Office of Reporter of Decisions that was deleted from the recommendation, Gadola said. He said this would be necessary to add back in because they were just picking up backlog from decisions.
Glenn Page, member of the Judicial Tenure Commission, highlighted making three of their limited term staff members permanent to “get qualified people to take a job without guarantee that they’re able to have a job by the end of September.” This one-time funding was removed from the governor’s recommendation.
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