Jury Duty, Part II: Never defend yourself

Why the defendant chose to represent himself I cannot say. I can say that we jurors, the judge and the prosecutor sincerely wished he hadn’t. We tried to follow him as he rambled through faulty logic, sometimes seeming to argue both sides of a point. We could kind of figure out where he was headed, but he could never get there. And even if he could have, the points were irrelevant. When he questioned witnesses, it often veered from query into testimony, which the judge cautioned him on time in time again. The prosecutor gave up trying to categorize his objections, and instead switched to merely holding up his hands in silent meaning: “What the f*#@?.”

It wouldn’t have mattered if the defendant had a lawyer. We still would have found him guilty based on the girl’s testimony. But, were he to ask me, here are just a few reasons why he should have kept the lawyer assigned to him:

1. A lawyer wouldn’t tell the jury you have fathered 13 children and think we’d see that as evidence that you love kids.
2. A lawyer wouldn’t argue that a little girl admitting she didn’t want to be in court meant that she had lied about the attacks.
3. A lawyer wouldn’t share that the girl’s father had warned the mother multiple times from prison that he’d heard her boyfriend messed with young girls and argue that this proved the father had it out for the boyfriend and the girl only said she’d been assaulted because the mother kept asking her.
4. A lawyer wouldn’t have told a 12-year-old witness to “redo your math” when he gave an answer to his age at the time of the attacks. Especially when the kid was right.
5. A lawyer wouldn’t have asked the girl’s brother on the stand how long his mom and you had
   “been messin’ around?”
6. A lawyer wouldn’t have asked the brother, “Do you think your mom would ever lie to protect me?” unless he knew for certain his answer would be “no” and not, in fact, “yes.”
7. A lawyer wouldn’t have tried to prove the children were never home alone with you by pointing out that they had to sit on the porch after school until you and their mom got home from work.
8. A lawyer never would have tried to prove your innocence by pointing out inconsistencies in police reports between what the girl said happened and what her father said she said happened, when those inconsistencies were only about the way you exposed your penis before you assaulted her. A lawyer wouldn’t have kept saying things like, “Did I unzip my pants and expose my penis? Or did I drop my pants and expose my penis? Or did I remove my pants and expose my penis?”

What’s that old adage? A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.