The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court guarantees a criminal defendant the right to representation by an attorney in serious criminal prosecutions.
These organizations employ more than 3,100 lawyers, investigators, paralegals, and support personnel and serve 92 of the 94 federal judicial districts.
The United States Congress placed this appointment authority in the United States courts of appeals rather than with the United States district court in order to insulate federal public defenders from the involvement of the court before which the defender principally practices.
[1] In a 2011 survey, Richard Posner and Albert Yoon found that federal judges perceived federal public defenders as providing higher quality representation than either privately retained counsel or attorneys appointed under the Criminal Justice Act.
The combination of salary, benefits and support team tends to attract, and more importantly retain, highly qualified attorneys.