Court Opinion

ID: 9724631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:05:13.429005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:03.304390
License: Public Domain

ROUSE, J.
I concur.
Because we are bound by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court on federal constitutional questions, I must concur in the result. However, in this instance I am more inclined to share the view expressed by Chief Justice Burger in his dissenting opinion in Faretta v. California (1975) 422 U.S. 806 [45 L.Ed.2d 562, 95 S.Ct. 2525],.namely, that the proper administration of justice is “ill-served, and the integrity of and public confidence in the system are undermined, when an easy conviction is obtained due to the defendant’s ill-advised decision to waive counsel.” (P. 839 [45 L.Ed.2d at p. 584].) The court itself recognized and identified the hazard of self-representation when it pointed out that “ ‘Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law. If charged with crime, he is incapable, generally, of determining for himself whether the indictment is good or bad. He is unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. Left without the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge, and convicted upon incompetent evidence, or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible. He lacks both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he have a perfect one. He requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him. Without it, though he be not guilty, he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence. If that be true of men of intelligence, how much more true is it of the ignorant and illiterate, or those of feeble intellect.’ ” (Faretta v. California, supra, fn. 43, p. 833, citing Powell v. Alabama (1932) 287 U.S. 45, 69 [77 L.Ed. 158, 170, 53 S.Ct. 55, 84 A.L.R. 527].)
*1063The notion that “he has made his bed—now let him lie in it,” has no place in our system of justice. Thus, it appears unrealistic for us to assume that, once he has elected to represent himself, a defendant will not be heard to claim inadequacy of representation as a basis for reversal of his conviction. (See Faretta v. California, supra, fn. 46, pp. 834-835 [45 L.Ed.2d at p. 581].) As appellate judges, we would be seriously remiss in our obligations to our office and justifiably subject to public censure if we blithely affirmed a judgment of conviction where the record before us was replete with prejudicial error, all due to the obvious inability of the accused to properly present his defense. Nor can I agree with a footnote suggestion in the majority’s opinion (see Faretta v. California, supra, fn. 46, pp. 834-835 [45 L.Ed.2d at p. 581]) that the possibility that many criminal defendants representing themselves may use the courtrooms for deliberate disruptions of their trials can be dealt with readily by the trial judge terminating self-representation. Recent experience has dramatically demonstrated that by the time such a sanction is imposed by a trial judge, irreparable damage may have been done.
The fact that, historically, the right of self-representation has been recognized by federal statute and by some states seems hardly a sufficient basis, in and of itself, to justify the continuance of such an ill-advised practice. I have.' detected little reluctance on the part of the court in recent times to overturn historical precedents in order to adapt our laws to the rapidly changing needs of a growing society. In fact, our citizens take great pride in acknowledging the wisdom and foresight of the founding fathers in drafting a Constitution which is sufficiently flexible in its terms to permit its application to our more complex way of life. Allowing an untrained and unskilled accused to represent himself in today’s complicated legal arena is, I submit, totally repugnant to our enlightened concept of due process.