Robert Gold-Smith
You have to realize that you did an absolutely terrible job representing yourself. If I want a will or a real estate deal you might be the best attorney in the state of Illinois, but you’re a terrible trial lawyer.
If I told you I needed heart surgery, you’d refer me to a gynecologist. You’d say what’s the difference, they’re both doctors. If you could sue yourself for ineffective assistance [of counsel], you’d have a dead-bang winner.
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If you’d sat there, shut up and kept quiet, maybe – just maybe – my decision would’ve been different, but every hole that was in their case – you filled in.
— Judge Daniel Rozak of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit Court of Will County, Illinois, offering former bankruptcy attorney Robert Gold-Smith a rather frank assessment of his pro-se criminal-defense skills, saying the lawyer was “not only ineffective, you’re inept.” At trial, Gold-Smith was convicted of solicitation of murder after offering to pay prison inmates to kill his wife. Judge Rozak went on to say that because the government had a weak case, Gold-Smith’s damaging self-representation was “the best thing the state had going for it.” Gold-Smith will be representing himself in an appeal.