Court Opinion

ID: 9790099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:46:08.143631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:26.081666
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur.
In doing so, however, I must express some of the unease addressed by Justice Richardson in his separate opinion. The right declared in Faretta v. California (1975) 422 U.S. 806 [45 L.Ed.2d 562, 95 S.Ct. 2525], is not as absolute as the majority opinion implies. Under some circumstances there may be a limitation on the right of self-representation, particularly in a capital case.
Although it is axiomatic that ordinarily a defendant controls the substance of his defense, in People v. Chadd (1981) 28 Cal.3d 739 [170 Cal.Rptr. *949798, 621 P.2d 837], we refused to permit a capital defendant to plead guilty over the objection of his attorney (Pen. Code, § 1018). We declared (at p. 752): “Faretta does not grant a capital defendant the right to ‘defend’ himself by discharging his counsel and waiving his automatic appeal.” The state has an interest in the proceedings that cannot be extinguished.
We have consistently refused to permit a defendant in a capital case to waive his right to appeal after conviction. In Massie v. Sumner (9th Cir. 1980) 624 F.2d 72, certiorari denied, 449 U.S. 1103 [66 L.Ed.2d 828, 101 S.Ct. 899], a defendant under a California sentence of death had attempted unsuccessfully to waive his automatic appeal in this court; he sought federal habeas corpus on the ground, inter alia, that such a compulsory proceeding violates his right of self-representation under Faretta. Affirming a denial of relief, the circuit court reasoned: “While Massie is correct in that he enjoys a constitutional right to self-representation, this right is limited and a court may appoint counsel over an accused’s objection in order to protect the public interest in the fairness and integrity of the proceedings.” (Italics added; id. at p. 74.) The court stressed that “a state may require reasonable proceedings in order to protect its own interests in the fairness of its determinations. In the same sense that a state may constitutionally require competency evaluations, a factual basis for a guilty plea, and other routinely accepted proceedings, it may also require a higher court review of a death sentence and conviction.” (Ibid.) The reason for this rule, said the court, is that “The state of California has a strong interest in the accuracy and fairness of all its criminal proceedings; this interest is most pronounced in a case such as this where a defendant pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death without the assistance of counsel.” (Ibid.)
Again in People v. Stanworth (1969) 71 Cal.2d 820, 833 [80 Cal.Rptr. 49, 457 P.2d 889], another case in which a capital defendant personally sought to dismiss his automatic appeal, we said: “It is manifest that the state in its solicitude for a defendant under sentence of death has not only invoked on his behalf a right to review the conviction by means of an automatic appeal but has also imposed a duty upon this court to make such review. We cannot avoid or abdicate this duty merely because defendant desires to waive the right provided for him. In other contexts it has been held that a defendant’s waiver or attempted waiver of a right is ineffective where it would involve also the renunciation of a correlative duty imposed upon the court.”
To the same effect is People v. Ballentine (1952) 39 Cal.2d 193 [246 P.2d 35], Indeed, the colloquy in that case between the defendant and the trial judge could have almost been taken from the transcript of the case before us. (Id. at pp. 194-195.)
*950What I am suggesting by the foregoing references is that the defendant’s Faretta right of self-representation in capital cases is not unlimited. He does not have a blank check. He cannot plead guilty and abandon his appeal rights directly, and he should not be allowed to do so indirectly by an inept performance.
If a trial judge, in protecting the state’s “strong interest in the accuracy and fairness of all its criminal proceedings,” decides that a defendant facing a potential death sentence requires the assistance of competent counsel, we should be reluctant to second-guess his conclusion. Had the trial judge here based his determination unequivocally on the inability of this defendant to handle a capital case, rather than merely on the nature of the case, I would not concur in the majority opinion.