If a lawyer and his client cannot agree on how to conduct the defense, the client can petition the court to permit her/him to get a new lawyer. I’ve proofread the transcripts of hearings on several such petitions. They’re normally held in a sealed proceeding without the prosecution being present. The judge will closely examine the defendant to make sure this is a well-founded request.
I do not know the procedure, if any, that would allow a lawyer to in effect fire his client, especially if the client resists such a request. That too would be a sealed hearing without the prosecutor present, if it were …
checking…
Ah. Here’s a link to the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct on this question. Relevant provision:
Except as stated in paragraph (c), a lawyer may withdraw from representing a client if:
(1) withdrawal can be accomplished without material adverse effect on the interests of the client;
(2) the client persists in a course of action involving the lawyer’s services that the lawyer reasonably believes is criminal or fraudulent;
(3) the client has used the lawyer’s services to perpetrate a crime or fraud;
(4) the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement;
And aha! Here’s a link to the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct on declining to represent a client, the wording of which tracks pretty much spot on to what I’ve quoted above. I daresay most all federal and state bar associations would follow the model code.
FWIW, there was a high-profile murder case back in my hometown in Wisconsin earlier this year, in which the defense attorney successfully petitioned to be removed from the case, after his client (the defendant) physically assaulted him in the courtroom during a hearing.
As it turns out, the attorney who replaced him, and who finished the trial with her (she was found guilty) was a friend of mine from high school.
In my jurisdiction, it’s a simple motion before the court, and can be done orally, without filing paperwork. Paperwork is nice, but I’ve seen such oral motions before, mostly when a party has represented themselves to their lawyer as one thing, but the facts that the other side has, reveal something else. An example would be, “Yes, Mr. Lawyer, I’ve kicked the cocaine habit, thanks to the XYZ Drug Treatment Centre.” And the lawyer goes forward with that. Except, upon further examination, the XYZ Drug Treatment Centre has no record of this accused ever being admitted for drug treatment. The lawyer cannot lie to a court, as the client wants; and so, the lawyer asks the court to be recused from the matter. In such circumstances, the recusal would generally be allowed.
I once saw a defence lawyer excused from continued representation of the client in a murder trial. Relations between lawyer and client had broken down irreversibly (amongst things on the public record, the accused had called his lawyer a racist in open court). Judge excused the lawyer, accused acted on his own, and got convicted of two counts of 2nd degree murder.
There are unique circumstances under which a defense attorney can dump a client.
Before I was a judge’s assistant, I worked as a paralegal for the local public defender. One day I got a call from one of our attorneys who was appearing with a defendant at an initial arraignment. He needed some information, asked me to find it and bring it to the courtroom.
The charges were attempted murder. This defendant, along with his brother, were already wanted for murder in Florida. They happened to be passing through our county when they were pulled over by a California Highway Patrol car. As the officers approached the vehicle, the two brothers started shooting. By some miracle, they didn’t hit the officers.
As I approached the courtroom doors, they flew open and people were streaming out of the room. I figured the judge had just called a recess, so I entered.
I will never forget the tableau that greeted my sight: The attorney who needed the information was wrestling on the floor with the defendant, who was wrestling with a female deputy sheriff as both the deputy and my attorney struggled to get her gun from the defendant’s hand. He’d grabbed it when the deputy momentarily turned her back to him to unlock a door to the custody area. The judge was still on the bench, face white as a sheet and was (I later learned when I became a clerk) pressing the panic button under his desk for all it was worth.
In seconds, my attorney prevailed and wrested the gun from the defendant, injuring his finger as he did so. He immediately sprang to his feet, looked at the judge and said, “I’d like to declare a conflict of interest, Your Honor, and I move to be excused from representing this defendant.”
Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have, it being a hijack of a kind. But as we were discussing circumstances under which an attorney can be excused from representing a defendant, I couldn’t resist.
As you know, there aren’t many days in the law biz when things get as exciting as that. Mike’s conflict declaration became the stuff of local legal legend. It was pure happenstance that I witnessed the spectacle.
Mike was always a very quick-witted guy. He had a wicked sense of humor, was very fast with the zingers. To those of us who knew him, it came as no surprise at all.
In the moment, it even broke some of the tension in the room.
I’m from Wisconsin, and had never heard of that surname before.
In fact, that wasn’t her birth name, and she had legally changed her surname to Schabusiness, which seems to be the last name that her husband has been using, though this source indicates that his legal surname is actually Schabow.