Does Mini-Defense in Capital Case After Perjury Threat Merit New Trial?
Concerned that their client intended to perjure himself in a Nevada capital murder case, defense lawyers for Siaosi Vanisi sought to withdraw.
Then, when the judge refused permission to do so, they put on an abbreviated version of a standard murder defense: They eliminated opening and closing arguments and the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses—and put up no witnesses of their own, says attorney Thomas Qualls.
Now representing Vanisi on appeal, Qualls argued before the Nevada Supreme Court this week that his client received ineffective assistance of counsel and should get a new trial in the Washoe District Court case, reports the Associated Press.
“The Sixth Amendment affords you more than just having the right to have an attorney sit with you at trial,” contended Qualls, who also argued that his client should have been found incompetent by Judge Connie Steinheimer.
In response, prosecutor Terry McCarthy said the evidence against Vanisi—who was found guilty of murdering a law enforcement officer with a hatchet after a routine traffic stop—was so overwhelming that the outcome of the case would have been the same even if Steinheimer had granted the lawyers’ motion to withdraw, the news agency recounts.
McCarthy also suggested Vanisi intended to try the same ploy on each new set of defense lawyers, potentially postponing his case indefinitely as he told them he would perjure himself on the stand.
A psychiatrist, he said, found that Vanisi was able but unwilling to assist in his own defense, concluding: “You can provide someone with competent counsel, but the state of Nevada cannot require that prisoner to take advantage of that counsel.”
No one knows what the outcome of the case would have been if Vanisi was properly represented, Qualls said. He expressed sympathy for the position in which trial counsel were put by the judge’s refusal to allow them to withdraw.
