BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Appellate Project (LAP) provides legal services to defendants who cannot afford an attorney, but it will soon lose its state funding.

WBRZ obtained a document stating that the Office of the State Public Defender will no longer fund the project. The letter from the project director to the State Supreme Court said the state will not renew its contract for the upcoming fiscal year which begins July 1.

The letter also states that indigent appellate representation will be administered directly by the state office through Deputy State Public Defender Michael A. Mitchell.

It also documents that State Public Defender Remy Starns will invite some attorneys to contract directly with the state but invitations have yet to be issued. 

LAP has provided legal services to people who cannot afford an attorney for appeals for the past 30 years. First and Fifth Circuit Supervisor Chad Ikerd said the group handles all non-capital felony cases in all 64 parishes.

In the 19th Judicial District, 29 appeals will be impacted by the cuts.

Ikerd said they handle nearly 400 cases at various stages of appellate review. About 140 are from the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals.

He said after June 30, he doesn't know if attorneys will be compensated to handle them.

"I don't want our attorneys to be committed to doing a lot of work. I mean this is a lot of hours spent on our appeals and we don't want them to be committed to do that past July 1 if I can't compensate them," Ikerd said.

LAP is a non-profit of 17 attorneys contracted by the state with an annual budget of $1.3 million. Ikerd said each attorney handles about 30 cases a year. He said that's about $2,000 per appeal. 

"The quality of representation that I think we get and give is equal if not superior to the private counsel and The competence here I think most of our clients will agree that our briefs and advocacy is top-notch," he said.

Louisiana State NAACP President Michael McClanahan said with the project funding drying up this raises concerns.

"Louisiana has a broken system that needs to be repaired and you don't fix a system by taking away funding," McClanahan said.

McClanahan said he believes this could result in delays for appeals to be reviewed.

"You lose almost your will to live because of a broken system, and now it's even, but hopefully they're working on a better system," he said.

WBRZ reached out to Starns for an interview. He agreed to do an interview. We have yet to hear back from him.