Earlier this month I wrote a post entitled Firing Your Criminal Defense Attorney Right Before Trial.
Here’s a case that (somewhat) illustrates my point.
A defendant was charged with armed robbery in Hampden Superior Court.
He worked with his attorney for two and a half years before the case was finally scheduled for a jury trial.
On the day of trial, defense counsel asked to withdraw from the case, claiming that she couldn’t control the defendant’s outburst.
Additionally, she claimed that the defendant didn’t listen to her, and that he swore at her.
The judge denied the motion.
As the trial proceeded, both the defense counsel and the defendant himself repeated the request to end the lawyer-client relationship and appoint new counsel.
One point of contention was defense counsel’s refusal to raise specific objections that the defendant thought relevant.
The judge also denied these requests, pointing out that the attorney had worked on the case for years and that none of the issues between her and the defendant impacted her role as effective counsel.
Ultimately the jury found the defendant guilty.
He appealed claiming, in part, that he received ineffective assistance of counsel due to the trial judge’s denial of the repeated motions to withdraw.
The Appeals Court rejected this argument and affirmed the conviction.
The judge correctly noted that defense counsel had worked with the defendant for two and a half years and the issues she was raising did not impact her role as effective counsel. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to effective assistance of counsel, but it does not invariably require a meaningful attorney-client relationship. Likewise, the judge acted squarely within his discretion to deny the mid-trial requests to withdraw based on the defendant’s demands for counsel to make specific objections. These denials also did not result in defendant receiving a constitutionally deficient defense where defense counsel’s actions at trial were not manifestly unreasonable. (Citations and quotations omitted.)
The full text of the opinion is attached below.