Court: mentally ill defendant can't be own lawyer - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mentally ill criminal defendants who have been found competent to stand trial can be denied the right to represent themselves, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday."
--------------------
Once I prosecuted a crazy man who insisted on representing himself. The offense was trespassing. He was living on somebody else's land and had built himself a shack complete with the treasures he accumulated by rummaging through trash. His defense was, "God owns the land." The jury was out 8 minutes. A few months later another prosecutor got the same defendant and same defense. Result: 5 minutes to guilty verdict. My record stood for a while, anyway.
This Supreme Court ruling is sensible because crazy people can't represent themselves effectively and the courtroom becomes even more of a loony bin than usual. Of course, it raises the question of what constitutes being competent to stand trial, but to crazy to be your own lawyer. If you are too crazy to represent yourself, how can you be competent to assist your attorney in your own defense? And is there any risk of a judge disallowing a certain type of defense by saying you must be crazy and forcing you to have an attorney, even though you as the defendant want to present it that way?
No comments:
Post a Comment