An extremely rare challenge to the state’s system of paying defense attorneys succeeded Thursday when a judge ordered the state to restore money it cut from a Lawrence attorney’s bill in a murder case.

Douglas County District Judge Michael Malone said it was wrong for the state’s Board of Indigents’ Defense Services to cut 25 percent from the bill attorney Greg Robinson submitted for defending Timothy Harrell in a murder and elder-abuse case. By Robinson’s math, the cut caused him to lose $2.48 per hour for each of the 400 hours he worked.

“It was not a fee that I believe was reasonable under the circumstances,” Malone said. “Mr. Robinson wasn’t making minimum wage. He wasn’t evening out. He was operating at a loss.”

The state indigents’ defense board, known as BIDS, pays attorneys $50 per hour for felony cases, a figure that the Legislature hasn’t increased since 1988. Earlier this year Robinson submitted a bill for $20,030 in the Harrell case, and Malone, the trial judge, approved it.

“I believe it was a fair voucher and a reasonable amount of money,” Malone said Thursday.

But the state refused to pay more than $5,000 of the submitted amount. Robinson still earned more than $37 per hour on paper, but he figured he lost money because it costs $40 per hour to run a law office.

Robinson said BIDS told him the money was cut because the board didn’t have enough money and because the case didn’t go to trial. Harrell, who was charged with murdering his elderly father by neglect, ended up pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter after it became clear that prosecutors initially had relied on incorrect expert testimony about bed sores.

“It was a very difficult case,” Malone said.

BIDS did not have an attorney at the hearing. Its executive director, Pat Scalia, previously said she hadn’t heard of a challenge similar to Robinson’s.

Ed Collister, a Lawrence attorney representing Robinson, said the board would have two options: pay the money and open itself up to similar claims in other cases or appeal Malone’s order.

Robinson’s case is one of two challenges to defense attorneys’ pay pending in Douglas County. In some misdemeanor cases, which are paid by the county, attorneys have begun submitting bills asking for $80 per hour, even though the normal rate is $50.