Your Day In Court: Self representation of a lawyer?

There has been some controversy in the Supreme Court about the viability of the mentally ill who chose to represent themselves rather than accept a lawyer's assistance.

It was judged a mentally ill person is capable of defending themselves if they can speak and write rationally at all. This is a disservice to people whose judgment may be severely impaired.

Even advice from a lawyer must be weighed and considered. I've had three instances of ending up in court as a result of my mental illness. In the second case, the public defendant didn't confer with me, or explain to me what the charges were or the ramification of any defense he might choose to take. That ended up in a plea bargain (unbeknown, st to me) which was not altogether in my best interest. I didn't even know they were plea bargaining.

The first time I ended up in court, it was for a false charge of disturbing the peace. For some reason I don't understand to this day, the public defendants all declared they had a conflict of interest and couldn't represent me. I don't know how that was possible since I was thousands of miles away from where I resided. So the judge asked me if I could represent myself and I told him I thought I could. When he asked if I wanted a trial by judge or by jury, I said trial by jury and the case was immediately dropped.

The last time I was in court, I was fully informed by my lawyer and he let me use my own judgement about what we should do. The charges were extremely serious and the stakes were very high. However, I ended up with no charges, no record, no nothing because of the competence of my lawyer and I.

My strong opinion is that a mentally ill person's trial should be delayed until they are stabilized and medicated. They should be in the hospital until that happens. Then a lawyer with a background in understanding the problems of the mentally ill should be enlisted and everything should be thoroughly discussed with the client.

I'm quite sure, if the public defendant had actually defended me, there would have been no plea bargain, no charges. He presumed to know what was best for me and shouldn't have.