For some Utah prisoners, the wait for an appellate lawyer stretches beyond a year. The state’s Indigent Appellate Defense Division has four full-time attorneys, handles nearly 100 criminal appeals annually and says it needs twice its current staff to keep pace, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. The division’s budget is about $2 million.
The wait begins after the appeal is filed
Utah’s rules generally give a defendant 30 days after entry of a judgment to file a notice of appeal, subject to exceptions. That deadline is separate from the later wait for counsel and briefing. For eligible adult criminal cases from rural counties, the Indigent Defense Commission says the Court of Appeals appoints its appellate division after the notice is filed. Utah Rule of Appellate Procedure 4 and the commission’s description of the division outline those steps.
The Tribune reports that the division’s attorneys are each expected to file one new appeal a month, while some initial briefs have taken as long as two years and attorneys have routinely sought 20 or more deadline extensions. The reported statewide average is 798 days for briefing by both sides and 876 days from notice of appeal to a court ruling; those figures describe Utah criminal appeals overall, not just cases handled by this division. Ben Miller, who was the division’s deputy chief for five years, told the Tribune an opening brief would normally take 60 to 90 days.
The division was created in 2020 to handle criminal appeals from rural counties and now takes roughly one-fifth of the statewide caseload, the Tribune reports. Its 2022 annual report said it had handled 130 appeals since its creation and that appeals were up 52% since fall 2020. Those figures document increased volume, but do not show how the division’s average wait or time to decision changed over that period, according to the Utah Indigent Defense Commission’s annual report.
A rural service with limited capacity
Utah’s broader indigent-defense system relies substantially on local services. The commission says its grant program provides more than $7 million a year to 21 counties and two cities for local indigent-defense services. That funding is distinct from the staffing needs of the state appellate division; the commission says the division requires more attorneys to manage its appeals.
The funding contrast is part of the current dispute. The Legislature funded nine new lawyers for the attorney general’s criminal appellate division, while it has not approved the additional attorneys sought for indigent appeals, the Tribune reports. The Tribune also reports that the defense division has succeeded in 23 appeals over the past three years, roughly two-thirds of statewide winning criminal appeals.
Attorneys and officials interviewed by the Tribune warned that prolonged cases can leave evidence stale and memories faded, while creating uncertainty for defendants and victims. The reporting describes roughly 70 people convicted in rural counties still awaiting representation. The available figures establish a substantial wait and limited staffing; they do not, on their own, establish that every delayed appeal has caused a legal violation or changed its outcome.
Other states offer different responses, not a single template
Illinois provides an appellate-specific comparison. Its appellate defender reported reducing a backlog that had exceeded 3,759 cases to fewer than 500 cases with complete records by March 2022, attributing progress to four years of full funding and staffing, according to Capitol News Illinois. That account describes one agency’s explanation for its progress; it does not establish that the same approach would produce the same results in Utah.
Other states’ figures concern different stages of representation. Oregon reported a 66% drop in unrepresented criminal defendants in the year before September 2026, but more than 1,000 people still lacked appointed counsel. Officials cited a mix of hiring, contract changes, a state-staffed trial division and special court dockets, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Those were defendants awaiting counsel, not a measure of appellate briefing time.
Missouri and Wisconsin illustrate still other responses to shortages of appointed counsel. After Missouri waitlists exceeded 5,800 cases across 29 counties, a court ordered the state to appoint counsel within two weeks after a person qualified for counsel, according to the Sixth Amendment Center. The same organization describes a Wisconsin class-action lawsuit over delays in appointing counsel. These trial-level appointment disputes are not direct comparisons to Utah’s criminal appeals backlog.
Utah’s immediate question is whether its appellate division will receive enough attorneys to handle the rural cases assigned to it without waits extending into years. The Tribune’s reporting documents the staffing shortfall and the experiences of people waiting for counsel; the state’s published 2022 figures show earlier caseload growth, but do not answer whether later funding or staffing changes have altered the pace of appeals.
