Less than four minutes into the hearing, Dear interrupted his attorney...Daniel King. King, who was part of the team that represented Aurora theater shooter James Holmes, did not acknowledge the outbursts.
"I am guilty, there's no trial. I am a warrior for the babies!" he shouted at King.
Looking at King, Dear shouted: "Do you know who this lawyer is? He's the lawyer for the Batman shooter that drugged him all up, and that's what they want to do to me."
Mr. King ignored this statement.
The story goes on to report:
As Chief District Court Judge Gilbert Martinez was issuing a gag order for law enforcement and attorneys, Dear accused defense attorneys of hiding the "truth."
Apparently, Mr. Dear has not been reading this blog, or much of anything that realistically discusses the accepted role of defense attorneys. A determination to pursue the truth is not among the profession's requirements.
King asked the judge to order prosecutors to promptly provide them with evidence so the defense team can "learn the depth of Mr. Dear's mental illness." Prosecutors had not "disclosed one piece of evidence," King said.
Dear interrupted, "You're trying to silence me."
King told the judge, "I think the problem is obvious, Your Honor."
II tells us a good deal that a client's telling the truth is now regarded by defense counsel as, not merely inconvenient, but as evidence of mental illness. This is what our "ethics" have come to. Truth telling = mental defect. Does anyone still wonder why lawyers have the reputation they do?
Still, I am constrained to agree with defense counsel's view, in a sense, anyway. The "problem," as counsel conceptualizes it, is that (1) his client views abortion as murder, (2) planned (as he said) to be a "warrior" against it, and (3) did so by intentionally killing three of his fellow creatures. To my knowledge, none of this is even contested.
There are millions of intelligent people of good faith who view abortion, especially late term abortion, as murder. But almost none of them thinks the right thing to do about it is gun down abortion providers, still less gun down the police.
On the current evidence, this case does not feature that many riddles, despite what the public defender says. Dear is a motivated man; he spent considerable time planning how he was going to become a "warrior for babies;" and he followed through on his plan, not without "success" as he views it.
This may be seen as many things, but mental incompetence in any recognized sense is not one of them. Viewed from a certain perspective, Dear was engaged in (what is in my view a very warped form of) civil disobedience. He thinks the current state of the law, under which abortion is legal, is immoral, and he aims to change it -- and to stop abortions -- by direct action. He also wants to embrace, not avoid, the consequences of those actions. By embracing them -- by announcing that he's guilty and wants no trial -- he hopes to shame the country into changing the law. That is the hallmark of civil disobedience.
The proper role for his lawyer is to comply with his client's long-held beliefs, and with how the client wants publicly to portray his case. It emphatically is not to engineer what other people, or other defense lawyers in different and more typical cases, would consider to be the preferred outcome, i.e., a relatively lenient sentence under some kind of degraded mental state theory.
We have seen this sort of defense behavior before, such as, for example, in the capital case in which an attorney "intervened" to challenge a death sentence the defendant did not want to fight. See Kent's post here.
I have more than a few doubts whether the "all-in-for-the-client" theory of lawyering is the correct touchstone for the canons of ethics. But assuming arguendo that it is, defense lawyers don't get to choose when they go all in for the client's crusade -- or instead, go all in for their own.
Mr. Dear wants to tell the truth and proclaim his guilt. On that score, at least, good for him. The most important next step in this case is not for his assigned lawyer to undermine these wishes, but for the prosecutor to decide whether to pursue the death penalty. For my own part, I don't see why a jury should be deprived of the authority to decide whether or not this planned, multiple murder deserves the ultimate punishment.
I don't think think Dear's case is comparable to that of Ballard mentioned in Kent's post you linked to. Ballard's case had been tried and his conviction affirmed on appeal and he affirmatively stated to appellate counsel that he wanted no further appeals.
Dear made his first appearance less than two weeks after the murders when he proclaimed his guilt. I doubt any judge would allow any capital murder defendant to waive counsel let alone plead guilty that early in the proceedings. Dear's behavior in court raises questions about his competency to stand trial that no competent counsel, or judge could ignore.
If Dear is found competent, then he has the absolute right to represent himself, plead guilty and ask for the death penalty, if so inclined.
You are correct that the two cases are not the same, but they are comparable. The single most important item of similarity for purposes of this entry is that, in both, the defense lawyer is trying to undertake a defense the defendant does not want, and thus is abrogating his duty to represent the individual client's interests, as the client sees them.
Yes, if there is a substantial case the client is mentally incompetent (e.g., he thinks the things he shot we characters in a play or were pumpkins), then the right thing to do is for counsel to seek a competency exam. And if I were the judge here, I would order one regardless, just to make sure my backside is covered.
In the James Holmes theater shooting, I thought there was a credible, although far from overpowering, case that the defendant was truly crazy, i.e., that he sees a different universe from the one you and I see. I see very little such evidence here.
Mr. Dear's belief, that abortion providers are always-and-ever murderers, is highly controversial but enjoys sufficient subscription among millions of thoughtful people that it cannot by any stretch be thought to be insane. I'm just not seeing any evidence that Dear is crazy in any conventionally or legally recognized sense. Therefore, the lawyer should do what he asks.
Dear's outbursts in court raise a different question -- a question related not to sanity, but to a more common problem with defendants in violent crime cases, to wit, impulse control. Dear thinks he's entitled to be aggressive and to blurt out, but that does not differentiate him from dozens of defendants.
I just do not see this case as all that complicated. Dear is a crusader for a widely subscribed cause (abortion-is-murder). People have different views on whether that is CORRECT, but one way or the other, it is certainly not CRAZY. I think, as you suggest toward the end of your remark, that Dear knows what he wants, that his desire is sane (though criminally wrong in my view), and that he should be allowed to embrace the legal consequences of his acts in the same way that, when I was an AUSA, I allowed war protesters illegally demonstrating at the nearby Pentagon to embrace theirs.
Thank you for your comment. I think in my last response to you (in the Charleston massacre case), I was overly aggressive to the point of off-putting, and I apologize for that. I hope I have kept this response more moderate in tone.
Thanks Bill, no apology necessary.