NCJ Number
139045
Journal
Behavioral Sciences and the Law Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1992), 395-406
Date Published
1992
Length
12 pages
Annotation
While the U.S. Supreme Court's 1975 decision in Faretta v. California generally allows competent defendants to represent themselves, the problem of defining competency to waive counsel has not yet been resolved. There has been little research into the frequency of, or reasons for, attempts to waive counsel, the process of forensic evaluations of competency, and the success of such attempts.
Abstract
This article reviews Federal and State laws and notes the continuous tension between the right to counsel and the right to self-representation, with some courts and experts believing the rights are mutually exclusive while others find them complementary. A brief literature review summarizes the research conducted on this topic to date. These authors examine several questions concerning defendants' competency to waive representation by counsel. The data were obtained from interviews with 100 consecutive defendants admitted to the Mendota (Wisconsin) Mental Health Institute for evaluation of, or treatment to regain, competency to stand trial. Diagnoses were made by the admitting psychiatrist on the basis of DSM-IIIR criteria. About 25 percent of the sample had tried to fire their attorneys; another 11 percent wanted to represent themselves. All members of the latter group were found to be incompetent by both evaluators and the court; this study did not find that defendants' competency was questioned merely because they wanted to waive their right to counsel, as all these defendants suffered from major psychoses. In the cases of those defendants who wanted to fire their attorneys, the evaluators found that, while almost all of them suffered from major mental disorders, they were still able to cooperate with counsel in defending themselves. 6 tables and 33 references