Court-Appointed Lawyer Denied, Now What

[Mr. Knowitall]

The discovery rule dictates how to request discovery and what you can obtain. If your husband wants to file for discovery, he would file a discovery request asking that the prosecutor turn over everything that he is entitled to obtain under that rule. The discovery demand would be served on the prosecutor, with a copy and proof of service filed with the court.

[Conrad Hunter]

First, your husband is a moron. Opening a sealed package in a store and obviously for a tool he couldn't afford. Stop trying to justify being married to a retard.

Any evidence the state is going to use has to be turned over to the defense, though as said above, it might take a motion or discovery request in this case.

BUT WAIT. If this is not a criminal offense, to which he is entitled to appointment of counsel, but is instead a civil ordinance violation, how the heck does he have a JURY TRIAL? There is never a right to jury. Is he being sued by the store in a civil action? Is there a private lawyer on the other side or is there a state prosecutor? Usually in a municipal ordinance violation like a traffice ticket, the only prosecutor is the arresting police office or the officer who wrote the ticket. There is no jury, there is never a jury.

REWIND: I just looked up the statute. This is a CRIMINAL OFFENSE punishable my up to 93 days in jail and a fine of $500. There absolutely is a right to appointment of counsel.

Now, if he asked for a court appointed attorney and the court determined he is capable of hiring an attorney, then it is a different matter. That itself could have been challenged or appealed.

Instead of making dumb arguments on his alleged innocence (yea because he is retarded I suppose) you should be asking simple questions about criminal procedure. You should be searching for a local legal defense organization that can provide some help. Also in this case, the state is obligated to reveal in advance anything they are going to introduce and that should have been done much earlier in the process than at trial. If the state has not, then your husband needs to make objections in court and on the record to the violations of criminal rules of procedure by the state. After jury selection is a little late, but still try.


Garbage in, garbage out.

[tc498]

If it's a low level misdemanaor and the state isn't gonna give him jail time then he might not be entailed to a public defender.

[Mr. Knowitall]

That's correct. If you're charged with a misdemeanor and the prosecutor waives jail time, you do not have a right to counsel even if in the absence of the waiver the maximum potential sentence includes jail.

In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 344-345 (1963), we held that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to state-appointed counsel, firmly established in federal-court proceedings in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938), applies to state criminal prosecutions through the Fourteenth Amendment. We clarified the scope of that right in Argersinger, holding that an indigent defendant must be offered counsel in any misdemeanor case "that actually leads to imprisonment." 407 U. S., at 33. Seven Terms later, Scott confirmed Argersinger's "delimit[ation]," 440 U. S., at 373. Although the governing statute in Scott authorized a jail sentence of up to one year, see id., at 368, we held that the defendant had no right to state-appointed counsel because the sole sentence actually imposed on him was a $50 fine, id., at 373. "Even were the matter res nova, " we stated, "the central premise of Argersinger — that actual imprisonment is a penalty different in kind from fines or the mere threat of imprisonment — is eminently sound and warrants adoption of actual imprisonment as the line defining the constitutional right to appointment of counsel" in nonfelony cases. Ibid.

Subsequent decisions have reiterated the Argersinger Scott "actual imprisonment" standard. See, e. g., Glover v. United States, 531 U. S. 198, 203 (2001) ("any amount of actual jail time has Sixth Amendment significance"); M. L. B. v. S. L. J., 519 U. S. 102, 113 (1996); Nichols v. United States, 511 U. S. 738, 746 (1994) (constitutional line is "between criminal proceedings that resulted in imprisonment, and those that did not"); id., at 750 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment) ("The Court in Scott, relying on Argersinger [,] drew a bright line between imprisonment and lesser criminal penalties."); Lassiter v. Department of Social Servs. of Durham Cty., 452 U. S. 18, 26 (1981). It is thus the controlling rule that "absent a knowing and intelligent waiver, no person may be imprisoned for any offense . . . unless he was represented by counsel at his trial." Argersinger, 407 U. S., at 37.