case for argument is may please the court this case is not about this one page waiver form that mr john paul signed on april fourth two thousand and eight this case is about the three months of confusion and vacillation that led up to mr john paul signing this form and how the record is silent as to if or when or how that confusion was ever resolve it is well established that courts indulge every reasonable presumption against a waiver of a defendant's fundamental constitutional rights including the right to counsel and in supreme court establish the bedrock principle that a waiver of counsel must be knowing and intelligent what could be more clear than his waiver of your honor it's not the it's not enough that a waiver be voluntary it has to be knowing and intelligent i said what could be a clear waiver than his right for a clear waiver that his waiver would be a written waiver without evidence in the record of confusion on the part of the defendant which we have ample of here exactly what was going on in his case and tends to show that this was knowing and voluntary leave or i mean there were a lot of letters back and forth a lot of communications on very loose and he knew what stage the case that he knew of his right to respond to the no merit report well your honor that's that's january seventh he has his counsel wrote to him and  enclosed with it the form waiver and the letter informed him that if he didn't return it to them if we didn't return to him signed that he would prepare and file an omar report on his behalf notably the letter also inform him that the then you know a few days later his counsel on january fourteenth his counsel acknowledges receipt says we'll file the no mare report then two months go by without any communication between mr john paul and his attorney and in that time the march fourteenth he was mistaken about the date and i mean it's but you know it's clear that he knows what a no merit is and that he's going to have the right to respond it's mistaken about the date only and you know only later decided that he wanted to go back to his original plan of representing himself well it's the record isn't clear that he was only mistaken about the date it's not really clear what the you know the depth of his confusion was i mean he was certainly at least confused about the date and i mean given his confusion about the date again two months go by there's no communication between himself and his attorney he thinks that it's time for he didn't think that the time of the no mirror court was due on march fourteenth could knowingly involuntary and we need his right to counsel i mean that tends to support the wisconsin court of appeals decision rather than undermine it well it's suggest that he was he was at the very least confused about the deadlines and it's i don't it's not fair to read into the into the just to assume his confusion was was only to deadlines we know that there was the back and forth between himself and his attorneys we don't know what the content of that we understood that yes he was going to have an opportunity to to respond but again it's worth making assumptions based on on on the silent road as he's in his late thirty's early forty's what's his educational background had a series of about jobs specifics i'm not i'm not sure but it seems like it's you know some turnover there what did he do to be to what was his crime his crime was sentence for that crime in state court thirteen years in twelve years of supervision and so there must have been a lengthy criminal record suggesting again familiarity with the system intimately familiar with it so in january two thousand and eight mr john paul went from declining representation to requesting it in a matter of days and then after assuming that he would be represented not hearing from his counsel for two months and that's being confused about this march fourteenth deadline mr john paul invoked his right to counsel but he was confused and his waiver was anything but unequivocal and you know the written waiver is unequivocal and he says i understand that there are dangers and disadvantages riverside  correct that the waiver is the confusion the confusion your honor is in the context in which they it was in the context in which the waiver form was signed he went from declining representation requesting representation to months go by he thinks that his time for preparing his response is is running and then and potentially in a state of panic he signs the no merit report because he feels that he needs or perhaps he needs to represent himself at this point and supreme again supreme court establishes a presumption against a waiver of what i'm sorry i don't understand that argument waive her counsel occurred well in advance of the deadline for filing for  conversation where mr john paul supposedly said he no longer wanted to represent him self contained in advisement and advisement that march fourteenth two thousand it was the next deadline to take action in his case and then there was no communication of dates between them after that point so he thought that march fourteenth two thousand and eight was was a deadline so that's why that's what triggered the march seventeenth and march twenty third letters to both his lawyer and the court the clerk of courts of the court of appeals but counsel cleared that up right well they sent letters back to him but the record doesn't show when mr john paul received those letters and it appears that it was likely too late because on april questions about the arguments on exhaustion waiver and the claim that mr jean paul raised below i'm going to stand on my briefs on those points just briefly say that the claim he actually wrote raised in state court  district court was that the court of appeals didn't determine his competency to proceed pro se that's not there's no clearly established supreme court precedent demanding a court make that inquiry and in this case there is no reason to believe that mr jean paul had trouble reading and writing that would have prevented him from representing himself as a under the claim that mr jean paul is now raising essentially saying waiver was not knowing and intelligent because the court because there is a failure to explain the court's role in the no merit proceeding and because he suddenly changed his mind and that should have prompted more increase by the court  what should be fatal really is that there's no clearly established supreme court precedent on those two alleged failings again or in haiti as the court the question is whether the court of appeals acted contrary to controlling supreme court precedent and there's nothing to to hinge on here as to the court's role in the merit he relies heavily on bet's but that case was was pretty factually different there was a wholesale  denial of counsel evidence that that's got bad advice here we have a pretty unequivocal waiver and other evidence that jean paul understood the process he understood the no merit process that he would file a two months that passed during that time counsel was working on the no merit report there is nothing to communicate and jean paul's later acts by appropriately dismissing the new merit of the notice of appeal by going ahead and filing his stranger sold everything he was a literate but he also did argue that his waiver wasn't knowing and voluntary he referenced that the other should've been a colloquy and his reference to the knowing voluntary waiver was certainly enough to put the court i notice  that wasn't an issue for the state court the know it and he he argued that he was not competent to to represent himself or competent to waive but we're not raising that argument here right that would be a state law issue