Miscellaneous

Pro Se Wins One for Himself

By Anne Skove, Esq.

They say even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in awhile. So maybe it's not a huge surprise that a pro se defendant won his own murder case after all.

How did he do it? Three days, no witnesses, and deliberations lasted less than an hour! Some judges would kill (well, not literally) for that kind of efficiency.

OK, so the file was 5 inches thick (oh, the details one learns from the Washington Post!), but the case has a long history. An earlier trial (with a lawyer) ended in mistrial when it became clear that one juror did not understand English well enough to participate.

This trial also began with a lawyer, but he and the defendant parted ways after a "massive disagreement." No kidding!

See Murder Defendant Found Man to Win Case: Himself, Ruben Castaneda, Washington Post (March 17, 2008).

One former prosecutor called the defendant "a prosecutor's nightmare," noting that juries are more sympathetic to pro ses. If this were true, though, a) more defendants would try it, and b) more would be successful. One study found that 39 out of 49 such cases ended in a guilty verdict; only 4 were acquitted on all charges.

Why DIY? Personal reasons top the list, but eccentricity is a close second. See "A Fool for a Client": Print Potrayals of 49 Pro Se Criminal Defendants, Mossman and Dunseith, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (2001), exploring motivation. (Link is to abstract.)

Another study found that 80% of pro se defendants were not mentally ill, and that conviction rates are equal to or lower than represented felony defendants. See Defending the Right to Self Representation: An Empirical Look at the Pro Se Felony Defendant, Erica J. Hashimoto, North Carolina Law Review, vol. 85, i. 2 (January 2007). (Link is to SSRN abstract.)

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).