United States v. Barnes, No. 10-3099-cr (2d Cir. September 4, 2012) (Kearse, Parker, Hall, CJJ).
Tuere Barnes and his co-defendants faced a thirty-eight count superseding indictment charging them with racketeering and several violent crimes in aid of it, including murder. The case moved fairly slowly – the original indictment was from 2004 and the superseder dropped in 2006. But by late 2007, it emerged that Barnes and his CJA attorney were not getting along. The district court conducted several hearings about this between November 2007 and March of 2008. By that time, Barnes’s position was that he did not want his CJA attorney, did not want to proceed pro se, did not want a different CJA attorney, and would not consent to a psychiatric evaluation.
A few months later, in July of 2008, Barnes formally asked the court to allow him to proceed pro se. In …