Anthony J. Pardon, facing the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of raping and murdering a woman in her East Side apartment, has decided to represent himself in his trial, which is set to begin Monday with jury selection. The judge is among those who think it’s a bad decision.
There’s an old adage that a person who serves as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.
But a defendant who represents himself in a death-penalty case?
One Columbus defense attorney who has represented several defendants in capital cases gave a stark assessment of such a choice.
“It’s suicide,” Kort Gatterdam said when asked about Anthony J. Pardon’s decision to waive his right to an attorney and defend himself in his death-penalty trial, which is set to begin Monday with the first phase of jury selection.
“A death-penalty case is hard enough when you have two skilled attorneys, a mitigation specialist, an investigator, a psychologist and other experts,” Gatterdam said. “But to do it on your own, it’s not a wise choice. It’s not a fair fight.”
Pardon, 55, is accused of raping and murdering Rachael Anderson, a 24-year-old aspiring funeral director, in her East Side apartment. Her body was found there, bound and stuffed in a closet, on Jan. 29, 2018.
At a pretrial hearing on Friday, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh, who will preside over the trial, tried to convince Pardon that he should use his court-appointed lawyers and that representing himself was a mistake.
“He absolutely has the right to do it, but it’s not the best thing for him, in large part because of the serious nature of the case and the potential consequences,” McIntosh said after the hearing. “I tried to let him know, in the long run, you’re hurting yourself.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1975, in Faretta v. California, that defendants have a right to refuse counsel and defend themselves in state court if the decision is made voluntarily and intelligently. But after the fact, they can’t file an appeal claiming they had ineffective counsel.
McIntosh was required to ask Pardon a series of questions to make sure he was willing to follow the rules of evidence and act in a professional and ethical manner.
Pardon signed a waiver saying he understood his responsibilities and had been advised by the judge that he would be “better defended by a trained lawyer than by myself.”
Lawyers Larry Thomas and Isabella Dixon, both experienced criminal-defense attorneys, will be seated with Pardon in court but will only be able to provide procedural guidance, not legal advice.
“I’m really hoping he thinks about this and reconsiders this decision,” McIntosh said.
Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said he is unaware of any death-penalty defendant representing himself at trial in Franklin County, but he said it has happened at least once in Ohio.
The Pardon case, he said, will include the presentation of complicated DNA and cellphone evidence that is challenging for experienced lawyers, let alone a defendant with no legal training.
“The judge told him he was ill-serving himself,” O’Brien said. “It’s true.”
The challenges facing Pardon will begin this week, during a phase of jury selection in which the prosecution and defense try to educate potential jurors about Ohio’s death-penalty law and question them about their ability to be open-minded in following the law.
Only those who can set aside their opinions about the death-penalty can be qualified to move on to the final round of jury selection.
“I can’t imagine (Pardon) knows how to death-qualify a juror or how to ask a question that will expose biases,” Gatterdam said. “This is tough, because someone’s life is on the line.”
Source: stagenc.build.dispatch.com, John Futty, January 27, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde