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632 S.W.2d 570

Pryor v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee · decided 1982-03-17

Relies on State v. Stinson · Perry v. United States · United States v. Jones

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1982-03-17

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently April 2009

3 state decisions

10198219902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1OPINION

BYERS, Judge.

¶2Pryor appeals from a dismissal of his petition for post-conviction relief after an evidentiary hearing.

¶3Pryor says he was improperly convicted because the trial judge did not advise him he could represent himself and because his trial counsel was inadequate.

¶4The judgment is affirmed.

¶5Pryor was tried on a charge of rape. On the morning of trial, Pryor informed the court he wished to have the two attorneys who were appointed to represent him relieved and he wished to have other counsel. The trial judge denied this request. Pryor never made a request to represent himself.

¶6A trial judge is not required sua sponte to advise an accused of his right to self-representation. United States v. Jones, 514 F.2d 1331 (D.C.Cir.1975); State v. Stinson, 424 A.2d 327 (Me.1981). When an accused asserts the right to self-representation, the assertion must be unequivocal. Stinson, supra; Perry v. United States, 364 A.2d 617 (U.S.App.D.C.1976).

¶7Pryor claims his attorneys were inadequate because they raised a defense of insanity based upon drug ingestion. He says this indicates their incompetency because the defendant would not have prevailed even had it been shown.

¶8The trial judge noted, and after taking notice of the records of this Court we agree with him, the evidence of Pryor’s guilt was overwhelming. The record clearly shows trial counsel was very competent and doing the best they could do with a hopeless situation. They attempted to show his use of drugs had rendered him insane generally.

O’BRIEN and DAUGHTREY, JJ., concur.
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