Standards for Self-Representation
Via TalkLeft I see this transcript of the bench conference in which Muhammad asked that his lawyers take over the case once again; the judge's response:
If I let them take over the case again, I'm not going to let you change again and represent yourself. I told you before that once the trial starts, it's going to be at the court's discretion as to whether you can represent yourself or not. When you asked before, it was at the very beginning of the trial, and you told me you had been thinking about it for several months, and that's the main reason why I let you represent yourself. Now, if they take over this case, they stay as counsel the rest of the way. Do you understand that? We're not going to switch back again.
This got me interested in the standards for allowing defendants to represent themselves, and how much discretion the judge has.
The right to self-representation is drawn from the 6th Amendment. As the Supreme Court said in Faretta v. California (1975):
The Sixth Amendment does not provide merely that a defense shall be made for the accused; it grants to the accused personally the right to make his defense. It is the accused, not counsel, who must be "informed of the nature and cause of the accusation," who must be "confronted with the witnesses against him," and who must be accorded "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor." Although not stated in the Amendment in so many words, the right to self-representation - to make one's own defense personally - is thus necessarily implied by the structure of the Amendment.
The court also set some ground rules:
When an accused manages his own defense, he relinquishes, as a purely factual matter, many of the traditional benefits associated with the right to counsel. For this reason, in order to represent himself, the accused must "knowingly and intelligently" forgo those relinquished benefits. Although a defendant need not himself have the skill and experience of a lawyer in order competently and intelligently to choose self-representation, he should be made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation, so that the record will establish that "he knows what he is doing and his choice is made with eyes open." (citations omitted)
It appears that trial courts are given pretty broad discretion to deny self-representation, particularly if the request is not timely (usually before jury selection or empaneling), or is purposefully intended merely to cause delays. For a recent example, see the 9th Circuit's denial of Ted Kaczynski's claims that the district court erroneously denied his Faretta motion.
So it seems that Muhammad's trial judge was actually being more lenient and flexible than necessary. The transcript suggests a very conscientious and capable jurist, which is actually really nice to see.
