Opinion ID: 1282788
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: participation by appointed counsel

Text: The requisite presentation of the analysis and evidence needed for a valid death sentence is not barred by a defendant's rejection of representation by appointed counsel. A defendant cannot be excluded from his own defense. Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution guarantees that the accused shall have the right    to be heard by himself and counsel   . The United States Supreme Court has held that the Sixth Amendment recognizes an accused's right to defend himself that the states must respect. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975). This right of the accused, however, does not prevent the state from taking steps to assure that its laws are correctly applied. Specifically in capital cases, the accused's right to defend himself does not displace a state's determination to impose and carry out a death sentence only if its legal and factual bases have been tested and established beyond a reasonable doubt. That determination and the accused's procedural rights can and must be accommodated. Judicial opinions have divided on the issue of how this should be done. Faretta itself was not a capital case. It was a prosecution for theft, and the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, held that the California Court of Appeal erred in denying defendant's request to proceed pro se. Moreover, the Faretta court noted that a State may  even over objection by the accused  appoint a `standby counsel' to aid the accused if and when the accused requests help, and to be available to represent the accused in the event that termination of the defendant's self-representation is necessary. Id. at 835 n. 46, 95 S.Ct. at 2541 n. 46. Subsequently, the Supreme Court affirmed a defendant's conviction for robbery and life imprisonment as a recidivist over his objection that standby counsel appointed for him had interfered in his conduct of his own defense. McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984). Justice O'Connor's majority opinion held that Faretta did not bar unsolicited participation by standby counsel, but standby counsel may not interfere over defendant's objection with defendant's own defense, create confusion by multiple voices `for the defense,' id. at 177, 104 S.Ct. at 950, or destroy the jury's perception that the defendant is representing himself. Id. at 178, 104 S.Ct. at 951. In proceedings outside a jury's presence, a trial court must be considered capable of differentiating the claims presented by a pro se defendant from those presented by standby counsel, id. at 179, 104 S.Ct. at 951, and the court may call on standby counsel even over objection to guide a defendant through courtroom procedures also in a jury trial. Id. at 184, 104 S.Ct. at 954. Justices White, Brennan and Marshall dissented on grounds that the Court's test allowed Wiggins's standby counsel too much interference in his defense. As already noted, these were not capital cases. They did not involve any right to bar or restrict participation of court-appointed counsel in a capital sentencing proceeding, particularly when the correctness of legal and factual bases of a death sentence must be able to withstand automatic appellate review. In such a case, a recent New Jersey decision reversed a trial court ruling that allowed a defendant to instruct counsel not to present evidence in mitigation of his crime and of the death penalty. Because without such a presentation the jury could not discharge its statutory duty, nor could the New Jersey Supreme Court exercise its mandatory review, the appellate court ordered the trial court to let counsel present mitigating evidence. State v. Hightower, 214 N.J. Super. 43, 518 A.2d 482 (1986). See also People v. Chadd, 28 Cal.3d 739, 621 P.2d 837, 170 Cal. Rptr. 798, cert. den. 452 U.S. 931, 101 S.Ct. 3066, 69 L.Ed.2d 431 (1981) (sustaining statute denying guilty plea without counsel's consent); Massie v. Sumner, 624 F.2d 72 (9th Cir.1980), cert. den. 449 U.S. 1103, 101 S.Ct. 899, 66 L.Ed.2d 828 (1981) (sustaining automatic statutory appeal against defendant's objections). The same principle applies here. It would be absurd to hold that a state denies a defendant life, liberty, or property, without due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment whenever the state insists on assuring itself that it takes his life (or his liberty or property, for that matter) only in strict compliance with law. [4] If there is any tension between that insistence and a defendant's right to present his own defense, the tension lies in the possibility of confusing a jury by divergent voices for the defense, McKaskle v. Wiggins, supra . It lies partly in the concept of standby counsel, which is why the present opinion keeps that phrase in quotation marks. For standby counsel ordinarily means counsel who have been appointed to offer legal advice to a defendant who rejects legal representation and chooses to conduct his own defense. It ordinarily implies standby counsel for the defendant.  That was the intended role of counsel in this case. If a defendant then rejects the advice and insists on silencing counsel, the conflict of roles discussed in McKaskle v. Wiggins is hard to resolve. In such a situation, in a capital case that must withstand the test of automatic review, a court can and should instruct appointed counsel to present the legal arguments, make the motions and objections, and call and examine the witnesses necessary to make the required record, and it should clearly inform the jury that counsel is acting independently of the defendant and is not permitted to prevent the accused from presenting his own defense, even when counsel thinks the attempt misguided or not responsive to the requirements of the law. Of course, since the state already is represented by the prosecutor, the task of appointed counsel in this public capacity would be to assure effective adversary procedure to test the prosecutor's case against both legal and factual requirements. Such a procedure could have gone far toward avoiding many of the flagrant flaws in this death sentence proceeding. Competent counsel, for instance, might at least have tried to determine what kind of criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society are within or outside the scope of ORS 163.150(1)(b)(B), and just how the mitigating factors required under the Supreme Court's Eddings and Lockett decisions relate to the questions submitted to the jury under ORS 163.150(1)(b). They might have called, examined, and cross-examined expert witnesses on the second statutory question, a question that the majority opinion holds is open to proof in each individual case. They certainly would have challenged the prosecutor's wholly improper and prejudicial peroration, in his closing speech to the jury, in which he called upon the jury to determine whose life is more valuable; Jeri Koenig's and the rest of us, those of us in society whatever that society may be, or this Defendant's. The three issues defined in the death penalty law emphatically do not include whether the victim's life is more valuable than the defendant's. The death penalty law would not permit the jury to engage in such a comparative valuing of lives if a highly respected and valuable member of society were to murder a penniless criminal, an addicted burglar or a blackmailing prostitute. It equally does not permit it in the more common situation presented in this case. To quote Chief Justice Thayer's criticism in State v. Olds of the district attorney's conscience of the community speech against that defendant: That he is a gambler and a worthless member of community, may be true; but he is on trial for his life, is within the pale of the law, and the courts can do no less than to require that the law be administered in his case as in all others  in accordance with its letter and spirit. 19 Or. at 440, 24 P. at 406. [5] Today's majority opinion agrees, 305 Or. at 180, 752 P.2d at 1177 and n. 25, but does nothing about it. The prosecutor's argument is another error apparent on the face of the present record that the trial court might have found ways to correct if there had been someone other than this self-important but incapable, unrepresented defendant to bring it to the court's attention.