was going on to say i guess something else but it's unfortunate that mr b interrupted that line of answers explanations by the public defender and then the public defender indicated that he had gone to see kerry the day before the hearing and about the arrangements for his attorney so i think it's clear from the dialog that was provided by the public defender the public defender knew gary did not want the public defender represented in this matter that he was seeking alternate counsel he did indicate pearlstein more attorneys and he said he had not had an opportunity to call them so i guess he had not had yet had a chance to determine what their role in it was i think it's important to note that todd tenant's name and telephone number was listed on the petition for involuntary admission and i think that at a bare minimum united states supreme court has found that due process protections do in fact catch when we're talking about involuntary movement as a substantial liberty interest that are at stake so i don't think that there's any issue about that  he wanted a different attorney or that he was represented by alternate counsel and i don't think that that is matters because i think it was very obvious that he didn't want representation by the public defender otherwise the public defender wouldn't make references to arranging for alternate counsel also there is no requirement that he indicated he is agency is supposed to be appointed to represent the respondent in these proceedings and if only if the guardianship and have it's a commission is not available is the public defender have any role to play at all so i don't think that and also there is no indication mr maule did not hear the names of anyone that contacted or are tempted to contact is an attorney and told me he does not represent gary i think that would be another matter but it's there he didn't going to any details about who he had in fact contacted he did represent the row they contacted mean you know i i think that if you read between the lines the public defender was assuming that he'd given him the names of  attorneys and that he wanted to go back and talk with him about his arrangements for counsel for an attorney so whatever mr tenet told the public defender when they met which given names of other attorneys now there was one particular attorney named edward crawls and mr earle i'm sorry the public defender did in fact contact mr croft and  to something like their well how soon do they hear their parents that could if that could have been a possible scenario your honor however i do believe that his ability to obtain alternate counsel means though mr rawls said he didn't represent him you know did did he have point takes to go out and hire an attorney now of course money is going to be part of that but as we know there is a  push towards you know pro bono work and i don't think that we should hang hang our hat on the fact that it's a wall here he had no means to to hire a song attorney therefore he's stuck with the very within its rights to have part along with with a public defender or some other alternate counsel so it's it's the court's obligation to not to just assume that mentally ill people can't retain counsel can't get counsel that represent them don't have the ability to know what to do to get that accomplished because everybody's presumed co conduct their own legal affairs and that or just kind of put that notion aside in dealing with area b and i think a lot of that was because of kerry the havior record i mean i'll be very honest with think that according to the record that gary b was deprived of his due process rights to attend the hearing he came in and he asked for a number of things ask to talk to attorneys waves the presents to the person and then there has to be a finding a clear showing that substantial harm mental or physical would come to the person if they please the court counsel my name is john chafee on here on behalf of the state respondent raises two arguments on appeal one the first argument is that the respondent was not allowed counsel of his choice and second argument is that he was denied his right to be present at the hearing the first argument whether respondent was allowed counsel of his choice i think maybe the better question would be how many how many opportunities how many chances  trial court need to give a responded to continually asserts new attorney after a new turning first the public defender at the hearing comes into court and says that respondent had given him several names have given him a number of different attorneys a number of different attorney names is exactly the quote todd tenant has responded mentioned top ten it was listed on the original petition and he was his name was just lists that listed under a contact as a contact the respondent had written down a phone number was also listed there and so that was on the original petition justice turner mentioned mole's testimony molt testified that he contacted her attempted to contact all of the various attorneys or contacts that respondent had given him and i think it's it's easy to assume that one of those contacts that he would have contact was probably ten todd tennant who is listed trauma i think on appeal i understand that the judge did actually have more testimony in front of him at the time he made that that ruling but i think what it does it shows from the totality of the record a consistent argument that responder was given multiple chances multiple opportunities to inform the court so in informed his public defender that he was represented by someone else would you agree your case would be stronger had more testify yes another thing i want to point out is that at the time of the hearing when respondent was informing the court that he wanted to talk to todd tenet and his mary pearl they actually he referred to mary holt you know under three different names there is m correction mary pearl and then find there's mary whole stime i think that just goes to you know none of us are actually sitting in that courtroom none of us are actually watching our response acting but i think what that does is it communicates to the trial know i'm not sure these i'm not sure these are real names i'm not sure these are turning these after that after respondent was allowed to leave the comment that his attorney made was that if i can apologize he says that that's all i want to bring to the court's attention then this morning respondent gave me apparently tired tenants and perlstein as attorneys and i have not had the opportunity to attempt to respondent didn't even communicate to the public defender these are turn east the pope defenders had assume since responder wanted to talk to these people i think the public defender made of assumption that these were attorneys it strikes me that both the issues that are raised by well it all concern trial major and when you have somebody who is obviously  he's a little wacky and that the issue then is is this is this a trial judge you say well you know he's nuts and let's just get on with it or do we say these are the steps you got to go through check the record and make sure that even though he's crazy refusing him all of this the process rights yeah i believe that in my opinion based on the record i think the trial judge did that  public defender came into the hearing and he said that i'm hitting inquired with every brawl the day before the hearing responded actually specifically gave the name that he was represented by edward rawls hope defender contacted did not you know specifically told the public defender that he did not represent responding so the question becomes when we need to let that the trial judge have the ability kind of to look at the circumstances before him and at some point he has to make a decision he or she has to make a decision that all right you know we've we've all made diligent efforts to seek out an attorney for this respondent and every time we have a hearing if respondent throws out another name then i do not believe that we should require the trial just over and over and over inquiring into every every name that responding gives and so i believe the trial judge in this situation looked at the circumstances saw that the public defender had make diligent efforts recognize that that responded had thrown  thrown out a lot of different names attorneys or not and based on the situation based on respondents actions at the hearing based on you know the way that he actually told someone  he said the public defender looked like somebody familiar police in the past mr police then he told someone to get your hand in my face based on all these situations based on the fact that i think a diligent effort has been made to inquire into respondents alleged attorneys the trial judge just made a decision you know what we need to do this now we don't need to continue to to look into any further names that respondent may give us so there's no further questions about your honor seventy furthe questions about that ok the second issue that respondent allege was that he was denied his right to be present at the hearing and this is it's an interesting issue because during jury respondents interruptions he was actually the one that said can i go can i go and the trial judge asked him do you want to be here and he says no the trial judge says again do you want to go and he says yes and the trial judge allows him to leap so my first argument is that under section three dash eight zero six it says that if the recipient refused to attend the hearing and not only was it explicit he said can i go can i go but his actions show that he refused to attend he he continually interrupted the trial judge while he was talking to the public defender  was throwing out various names that he wanted to talk to you as he was talking about police he called the public defender of the police or that he looks somewhat familiar and so my argument is that the interruptions on top of the explicit statements made by the respondent show the respondent refused to attend the hearing my argued on the contrary would be that that the public defender as respondents counsel properly waived respondants presence at the hearing and the based on respondents actions the court was satisfied by their showing their response attendance would subject him substantial risk of harm on the actions of interrupting the actions of the time the person to get his hand on his face simply the allegations of the petition itself and then again the testimony by the psychometrist was which again happened after the judge made this again after the judge made this ruling showed that the psych i just actually testified that responded if he didn't get into trouble were these were responded that you know we don't settle down here you don't act quickly in court respectful that this hearing king go or even though you were present again i think that would have been i think that would've been a better way probably to handle this but i think the trial court if you look at the record did give the respondents that option even told the respondent he said response i want to talk to ted and mary polson can i wait until then the court said let me hear from your  guess the way that dialogue took place and again i think the trial it probably would been better if the trial judge would have said something like this will continue without you but i think based on that dialogue it could have been it was communicated to respondent that these proceedings will go on even if you want to leave if you  participant in a court proceeding but that's not what happened in fact in fact very big was just indicating that he wanted to talk to some people before this name can start meaning before we go forward today i want to talk to these people and when he laughed there is nothing in the record as a state claims that it was communicated to respondent that the hearing would go on without him i think that it clearly could have found that given all this information that he had given the court between the public defender and the judge they would have made some type of an effort to comply with some of his requests to get these people ability to obtain counsel to determine whether he was capable of deciding who would represent him and it's not a situation where we've made a determination that the person can or cannot obtain counsel and  then they keep asking for continuances because this attorney is not hearing this attorney here that's not what happened he was given his chance and i think it's it's also important they made that determination based on his in the court room in the representations that were made to the i guess get into the question of whether he could afford an attorney whether who exactly did he want to representing those kinds of questions i think or decide they're even necessary i can tell based upon my observations we we enjoy a presumption that we are competent according to fellows paid to make those determinations to make legal determination based on that and i don't think that anything that happened in the trial court here would ever justify taking that away and saying that the court was justified and make and in fact had enough evidence to find that gary wasn't capable of determining should represent