Case ID: so2d_679/html/0358-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Hector RIVAS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
    No. 95-3620.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
    Sept. 11, 1996.
    Robert Friedman, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
    Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee; and Don M. Rogers, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for ap-pellee.
   PER CURIAM.

We reverse appellant’s conviction and remand for a new trial because the trial court allowed defendant to represent himself at trial, but did not conduct either a Nelson hearing or a Faretta hearing prior to allowing the trial to proceed as it did. If defendant had been represented by his court-appointed counsel throughout the trial, we might well have been able to find that the defendant’s ambiguous statements did not require a Faretta hearing; however, the court’s permitting him to represent himself without a Faretta hearing leaves us no alternative but to reverse.

DELL, KLEIN and PARIENTE, JJ., concur. 
      
      . Nelson v. State, 274 So.2d 256 (Fla. 4th DCA 1973), in which this court established the procedure for determining if a defendant is entitled to discharge his court-appointed counsel for ineffective assistance, approved in Hardwick v. State, 521 So.2d 1071 (Fla.1988).
     
      
      . Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975), holding that a defendant has the constitutional right to represent himself after the court makes a sufficient inquiry and is satisfied with defendant’s responses. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.111(d).