Court Opinion

ID: 9538347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:35:23.687109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:46.849238
License: Public Domain

CORNISH, Presiding Judge,
specially concurring:
A defendant in a state criminal trial has a constitutional right to represent himself if he voluntarily and intelligently elects to exercise that right. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975). The request to proceed pro se, however, must be unequivocal. Felts v. State, Okl.Cr., 588 P.2d 572 (1978). In the present case the appellant’s request was stated in the following way on page 6 of the transcript.
THE DEFENDANT: If I was afforded legal law books and excess (sic) to law library, I’m quite sure that I could proper represent myself and the time to do it.
The appellant seemed to be conditioning his request to proceed pro se on access to a law library. For security reasons a prisoner may-be denied access to a law library. See, United States v. West, 557 F.2d 151 (8th Cir. 1977); United States v. Chatman, 584 F.2d 1358 (4th Cir. 1978). The question to be answered then is whether the appellant unequivocally requested to represent himself or if he only wished to represent himself if he could have access to a law library. Unfortunately the trial judge did not question the appellant as to this matter. If the appellant was conditioning his request on the availability of library facilities then by the above cited circuit court decisions his request could probably have been properly denied. If the appellant was requesting self-representation under any circumstances then it was error to deny the request.
A second ground upon which a trial court could validly deny a request for self-representation is if the request is not timely. United States v. Denno, 348 F.2d 12 (2nd Cir. 1965). What constitutes a timely request has not been uniformly defined by the federal courts. One court has said that a request will be considered timely if made before the jury is selected, absent an affirmative showing that it was a tactic to secure delay Chapman v. United States, 553 F.2d 886, 887 (5th Cir. 1977). Another court has held the request to be timely if made before the jury is sworn. United States v. Price, 474 F.2d 1223 (9th Cir. 1973).
In any event the request must be made before meaningful trial proceedings have started. United States v. Lawrence, 605 F.2d 1321 (4th Cir. 1979). In the present case the request was made before any actual trial proceedings. The appellant’s request was therefore timely made.
The final point to be made concerning the right to self — representation is that the harmless error doctrine of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), does not apply to an error denying the self-representation right. Denial to the right to self-representation requires automatic reversal. Faretta v. California, su*248pra, Bittaker v. Enomoto, 587 F.2d 400 (9th Cir. 1978) cert. denied 441 U.S. 913, 99 S.Ct. 2013, 60 L.Ed.2d 386.