Court Opinion

ID: 9676615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:28:39.950489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:41.389503
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
I have no quarrel with Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975), which recognizes that a criminal defendant has a constitutional right of self-representation at trial. Indeed, I note that this court has gone beyond Faretta and recognized a right of criminal defendants pursuant to the Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure to represent themselves on direct appeal. State v. Seifert, 423 N.W.2d 368, 370 (Minn.1988).
I also agree with the majority that if the defendant in this case was denied his right to represent himself at trial, then he is entitled to a new trial because, as the United States Supreme Court has said, deprivation of the right of self-representation at trial is not amenable to harmless error analysis. McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 177 n. 8, 104 S.Ct. 944, 950 n. 8, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984).
The decision for a trial court to make when a criminal defendant says he wants to represent himself is not always an easy decision nor one involving a mechanical application of the principles of invocation of the right of self-representation and waiver of the right to counsel. Even in a case in which the criminal defendant is acting in good faith, the trial court may find itself in a quandary in deciding whether the defendant really wants to represent himself and, if so, whether the defendant’s waiver of his right to counsel is knowing and intelligent. As one court has put it, “The right to counsel is, in a sense, the paramount right; if wrongly denied, the defendant is likely to be more seriously injured than if denied his right to proceed pro se.” Tuitt v. Fair, 822 F.2d 166, 177 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 945, 108 S.Ct. 333, 98 L.Ed.2d 360 (1987). While knowing this, the trial court also knows that if it erroneously denies the defendant the right to represent himself, the defendant may obtain a new trial automatically even if it is clear to the reviewing court that if the defendant had represented himself the jury would have had an easier time deciding to convict him.
Of course, not all defendants act in good faith. Although Rules of Criminal Procedure exist to insure that each criminal prosecution is both orderly and fair, some criminal defendants are expert at turning the process into a game, the aim of which is to create error. This problem is particularly acute in the area of self-representation, where a defendant, by making an equivocal request to proceed without counsel, can place the trial court in a position to be “whipsawed”: if the trial court lets the defendant represent himself, the defendant can argue on appeal that he was deprived of his right to counsel, but if the trial court does not let the defendant represent himself, the defendant can claim he was deprived of his right to represent himself. Meeks v. Craven, 482 F.2d 465, 467-68 (9th Cir.1973).
In order to avoid giving criminal defendants a ready tool with which to upset adverse verdicts after trial, the courts require both an “unequivocal” demand by the defendant to proceed pro se and a knowing and voluntary waiver of the right to counsel. As stated by Justice Frankfurter:
In reviewing criminal cases, it is particularly important for appellate courts to re-live the whole trial imaginatively and not to extract from episodes in isolation abstract questions of evidence and procedure. To turn a criminal appeal into a quest for error no more promotes the ends of justice than to acquiesce in low standards of criminal prosecution.
Johnson v. United States, 318 U.S. 189, 202, 63 S.Ct. 549, 555, 87 L.Ed. 704 (1943) (concurring opinion). Reliving the over two years of pretrial proceedings imaginatively supports, I believe, Justice Yetka’s observation that Richards is a very clever manipulator and that “What Richards real*269ly wanted was to orchestrate the trial process, have an attorney whom he could use as an errand boy or puppet, and force the trial court into a Hobson’s choice where either alternative would result in a claim of reversible error.” Accord Tuitt, 822 F.2d at 174-77 (affirming trial court’s denial of the defendant’s equivocal request to represent himself). I also believe that the record supports the trial court’s determination that Richards’ purported waiver of his right to counsel was not knowing and intelligent. Accordingly, I would affirm the first-degree murder conviction.