No idea about legality (not being in or from US I have an excuse for my ignorance); however the idea of charging the defendants for administering justice can be traced back to at least the inquisition. They had a price list for "interrogation" operations, which were payable by the subject being tortu^Winterrogated.

Because a good number of their subjects failed to survive the administrations, these costs were often extracted from their family and relatives, retroactively.

On the director's commentary track for Brazil, Terry Gilliam notes that the inquisition's practice of charging fees for their (in)justice was one of the major ideas when honing the script and the storyboard.