Defendants who were assigned a court-appointed lawyer in Virginia received significantly longer sentences than those who had a public defender or hired their own attorneys, according to a study being released today by the State Crime Commission.

The study looked at the 19,000 felony sentences handed down last year by Virginia judges and compared the results by the kind of lawyer who handled the case. No matter how the statisticians sliced the data, defendants with court-appointed lawyers generally did worse than those with other lawyers.

The disparities were particularly large for assaults, drug cases and felonies with a maximum sentence of less than 10 years. In drug cases, for example, defendants with court-appointed lawyers received 2 1/2 years more time, on average. The disparities also were pronounced along the state's western border with West Virginia.

The study comes at a time when Virginia's reliance on private lawyers to defend many of its poorest citizens has been drawing criticism. In 47 of the state's 136 jurisdictions, public defender's offices provide salaried lawyers to represent most indigents.

Elsewhere, however, courts appoint private lawyers to represent all indigents, and the state imposes a cap on the fees they can receive -- which cannot be waived by courts -- regardless of how much time lawyers spend. Those limits are the lowest in the nation and have been the target of an unsuccessful legal challenge.

"It's no surprise that the statistics suggest Virginia's system is broken. We've been saying that for a long time," said Kate Jones, indigent defense counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "It's an indictment of a system that hasn't committed the resources necessary to fulfill constitutional requirements."

Although Virginia's hourly rates are not bad, defense lawyers almost immediately bump against the caps, giving them an incentive to stop work, lawyers said. Some court-appointed lawyers acknowledged that they sometimes skimp on out-of-court work, such as visiting the crime scene or meeting witnesses.

Many of Virginia's younger defense lawyers use court-appointed cases to get experience and then stop accepting all but the most serious cases when they have built their practices, lawyers said. By contrast, public defender's offices have senior lawyers to provide supervision and often have in-house investigators to do basic research.

"You get what you pay for," said Richmond lawyer Steve Benjamin, whose constitutional challenge to the fee caps was turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The real tragedy wasn't even studied. How many innocent defendants are convicted because of court-appointed lawyers?"

While lawyers complain about the state's low fees, the study found that the system doesn't save Virginia money. Last year, public defenders cost on average $118 per criminal charge they handled, and court-appointed lawyers cost $223 to $326 per charge.

"If there's such a glaring difference between the two, it highlights the need for a statewide public defender's office," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Alexandria), a Crime Commission member.

Having a public defender's office is largely a local decision -- in Northern Virginia, only Arlington and Prince William counties do not have them. But the Crime Commission is considering setting minimum standards for court-appointed counsel.

When the statisticians looked at the data, they found that defendants with private paid lawyers generally got the shortest sentences for similar crimes, but that the difference between them and those who had public defenders was relatively small. The big gap was between the public defenders and the court-appointed lawyers.

For assault cases, defendants received an average of 3.3 years longer in prison if they had a court-appointed lawyer; for larcenies, the difference was 1.7 years.

The sentence disparities varied widely by region. In far southwest Virginia, defendants with court-appointed lawyers got similar sentences as those with public defenders. But defendants in the Shenandoah area -- Bath and Highland counties, for example -- received nearly six years more in prison when they had court-appointed lawyers. In Northern Virginia, the difference was 1.9 years.