Fishu,
I'll say this very carefully so you can understand and then you'll have to figure out wether you're here because you're simply fond of critiquing America or you really want to know the answer to your question:
A court appoints an attourney to defend people in capital crimes when no other lawyers step forward to take the case. There are fixed rates that are billed based on hours spent on the case and the number of people working on it. The defense is obligated to review all of the evidence in order to offer up the best defense possible. That means they have to review the notes of police officers, the notes of FBI agents, every form filled out whenever someone took a phone call pertaining to the murders, interview as many people involved as possible and review all the evidence. Stop and think about how many murders were committed, how many police officers were involved, how many FBI agents were involved, how many different locations these crimes occured at, how many different pieces of evidence there were and generally how much is involved with this case. That takes resources to research properly. Those resources cost money. It really is that simple.
MiniD