Why Is Defending Yourself in Court a Bad Idea?

Lawyers are better trained in public speaking/appealing to juries and judges. Plus people are more likely to distrust someone trying to save his own hide rather than someone getting paid to save someone else's hide.

Why are there lawyers in the first place? Perhaps someone who has been trained in this knows something you don't.

Even if you were a lawyer, you would be better defended by someone with a more objective view of your case than yourself.

Also, lawyers actually know the motherfucking law.

where is madd cuddly, attorney at law?

Yeah, I think this is way less about public speaking / courtroom demeanor and way way more about knowing procedural stuff. All the prosecutor has to do is throw a couple complicated motions in your direction, and you're completely screwed -- or, at best, wasting all your time figuring out how to argue against something frivolous.

Plus the judge will hate you, because you'll be wasting everyone's time with a trial whose verdict you can always appeal on the grounds of your totally incompetent representation (you). Which means that in order to make the trial even close to not-totally-useless, the judge has to basically act as your lawyer and explain everything to you super-clearly and prompt you through every single bit of procedure in an effort to make the thing "fair."

I mean, just remember the hilariousness of the poor judge in the Moussaoui trial, sitting up there having hour-long arguments with the guy that boiled down to "Dude, you understand that's really stupid, what you're doing right now? You understand you could actually kind of win this point if you just said the opposite thing? Like, honestly, you understand that clearly and you're still going to do the stupid thing?"

Joe, if you're really interested in this subject, there's a great book called "Gideon's Trumpet" by Anthony Lewis. It's about the Supreme Court case that decided that the state must provide free attorneys in criminal cases.

The basis of the case is that this guy named Gideon was prosecuted for a petty crime of breaking and entering and stealing some hand cash and a bottle of wine. Being poor enough to actually steal a bottle of wine, he obviously couldn't afford an attorney, so he defended himself. In one part of the book, the book goes through the court case transcript and shows all the areas he could have defended himself that nobody would possibly have known had they not had legal training.

Two specific examples: one guy witnessed Gideon rob the store from across the street, and Gideon cross examined him. On cross examination, Gideon asked if he'd ever been arrested. The judge told Gideon that he wasn't allowed to ask that in a court of law, but could ask if he'd been guilty of any felonies. So, Gideon asked, and the answer was "no." There are tons of other ways to assess the guy's character, but Gideon hadn't known any of them. Then, in the cross examination, Gideon set out to prove that he wasn't a known alcoholic. He asked questions like, "Had you ever seen me drinking before?" For whatever reason, he thought it would be a good defense. Maybe make his character look good? But in reality, it quite hurt his case. The book didn't detail exactly how the Florida law worked at the time, but if Gideon had been drunk when the crime was comitted, his sentence would likely have been lower. Instead, he set out to prove the exact opposite.

In the end, he botched up his case terribly and received the maximum sentence possible. There's tons of ways to defend oneself that could never be known without a legal background. I highly suggest the book if it sounds interesting to you, I've really enjoyed it.