“The Fourteenth Amendment “forbids the government to infringe . . . `fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.” Washington v. Glucksberg, No. 96-110 (U.S. 06/26/1997) Syllabus by the Court Chief Justice Reinquist

In his recent book, Making Your Case, the Art of Persuading Judges, Justice Scalia wrote: “The most persuasive non governing case authorities are the dicta of governing courts”.

“there is no question that a party may represent his or her own interests in federal court without the aid of counsel. See 28 U. S. C. §1654 (“In all courts of the United States the parties may plead and conduct their own cases personally or by counsel . . .”) WINKELMAN V. PARMA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, 127 S. Ct. 1994 (2007)

I have no criminal record and no history of mental illness. I have a masters degree from MIT. Former judge Edward Nottingham ruled that I could not represent myself in other courts and he jailed me for 4 months to stop me from doing so and then threatened to put my husband in jail also if I did not dismiss a case in filed in a different federal court. I was not accused of contempt in the presence of the court. I was told that I was not allowed a lawyer and not allowed an evidentiary hearing. The AG wasn’t there–Nottingham made the orders to incarcerate directly to the U.S. Marshals and later he ordered them to bring me across state lines to him even though that is not allowed under U.S.C. Title 28 Part V Chapter 113 Section 1693. I think Nottingham’s bodyguards arranged it. I wrote to the public defender from jail for help but the CO public defenders wrote back that they were not allowed to represent me because I wasn’t accused of a crime. I know more about law every month but when I look back at what I wrote in Nottingham’s court, I don’t think it was that bad. There were never any rule 11 c. 6. orders against me and a lawyer familiar with my underlying facts reviewed my complaint and found no error in it. There were never any evidentiary hearings. I filed for partial summary judgment and the defense simply wrote to Nottingham and requested that he skip hearing my motion.

Recently I filed a lawsuit in the D of MN against Faegre & Benson whose former partner asked Nottingham to put me in jail without an evidentiary hearing and to issue a warrant for my arrest because I filed an appeal and motions in other courts and without a government lawyer or an affidavit of
probable cause. That was dismissed solely because I didn’t have a lawyer.No other reason was given in either the motion to dismiss or the judgment of dismissal. I filed a timely paid appeal in the 8th Circuit but it was dismissed without briefing or a reason. I filed a motion to be told why it was dismissed but they denied that. I quoted the S.C. Winkleman dicta to the en banc panel but they denied my petition for rehearing anyway, no reason given.

I was also denied use of court mediation services even though Congress supposedly requires them.

The U.S. judicial center has a manual on appellate procedure in which it discusses the fact that at the appellate level pro se decisions are written by clerks.

I posted a lot of references on pro se on Wikipedia but most of them were deleted. You can see them if you look in Sept 2008 history. Did you know that Robert W. Kearns was pro se when he won the $10 million patent infringement judgment from Ford in 1990?

Now, of course, not all criminal defense lawyers are created equally. There are lawyers with years of experience in one court. There are lawyers with years of experience in various courts trying one kind of case. There are appellate specialists. There are lawyers that are really good at negotiating pleas (negotiating a good plea in a complex case is very hard). Etc. etc.

Not all public defender regimes are created equally, too. My preference is always for a large public defender agency, even if it means some bureaucracy. But that isn’t the only way to do things.

Not all jurisdictions are the same. The amount of discovery available, and the law of severance, sentencing, evidence, etc. varies.

And most of all, not all defendants are created equally. Believe it or not, some of them have better facts than others. Not all defendants have cases that are built on the testimony of a crackhead. Some of them come to lawyers with a prosecutor that has them on videotape committing the crime. Some of them come to lawyers with ambiguous evidence.

Most of these nuances fly over the heads of such “studies.”

I did want to point something out about self-representation. I don’t see the debate as being really about whether people can represent themselves. Instead, I see it as being whether competency standards should be higher or lower.