Opinion ID: 3065267
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Indiana v. Edwards

Text: In Indiana v. Edwards, the Supreme Court addressed whether the standard for assessing a defendant’s competency to stand trial applies to the question of mental competence for purposes of self-representation at trial. 128 S. Ct. at 2383. Prior to Edwards, we held that where a defendant was found competent to stand trial under Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960) (per curiam), and had voluntarily and intelliwe instructed that, on remand, the district court’s decision to allow a defendant who lacks mental competency to conduct trial proceedings was a discretionary decision. We see no reason to depart from that formulation and thus apply an abuse of discretion standard here. 15882 UNITED STATES v. THOMPSON gently waived his Sixth Amendment right to counsel under Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975), a court was required to permit the defendant to proceed pro se. See United States v. Hernandez, 203 F.3d 614, 620 (9th Cir. 2000). In other words, prior to Edwards, “a defendant’s competence to waive the right to counsel [was] measured by the same standard under which competence to stand trial [was] evaluated.” Id. at 621 n.8. But Edwards considered that issue to be a question the Court had not resolved. 128 S. Ct. at 2383. [1] “[A]ssum[ing] that a criminal defendant has sufficient mental competence to stand trial (i.e., the defendant meets Dusky’s standard) and that the defendant insists on representing himself during that trial,” id. at 2385, Edwards held that states are free to assess the defendant’s competence for purposes of self-representation under a different competency standard, id. at 2386. The Court explained that the Constitution permits judges to take realistic account of the particular defendant’s mental capacities by asking whether a defendant who seeks to conduct his own defense at trial is mentally competent to do so. That is to say, the Constitution permits States to insist upon representation by counsel for those competent enough to stand trial under Dusky but who still suffer from severe mental illness to the point where they are not competent to conduct trial proceedings by themselves. Id. at 2387-88 (emphasis added). Edwards did not adopt a specific standard, id. at 2388, but instead recognized that the trial judge “will often prove best able to make more fine- tuned mental capacity decisions, tailored to the individualized circumstances of a particular defendant,” id. at 2387. Thus, after Edwards, at least one relevant consideration for a district court, should it choose to require a higher level of competence for self-representation, is whether a defendant who is otherwise able to satisfy the Dusky competence standard may nevUNITED STATES v. THOMPSON 15883 ertheless be “unable to carry out the basic tasks needed to present his own defense without the help of counsel.” Id. at 2386.