In a Rare Move, Suspect Defends Himself in Capital Case : Courts: He has chosen to act as his own attorney in a murder trial. But experts say he faces many obstacles. One wrong turn, they note, could put him on Death Row.

Last week in a dingy third-floor courtroom at the San Diego County Courthouse, accused murderer Billy Ray Waldon sat alone at a defense table, choosing the jurors who will decide whether he lives or dies.

His trial had not yet begun, and already more than one prospective juror had doubts. The problem, they told the court, was not Waldon, exactly. It was the man Waldon picked as his attorney in his death penalty case: himself.

“I’m biased against him,” said one man. “Him just sitting there without a lawyer. . . . I think he’s very foolish to represent himself.”

Such skepticism, lawyers and legal scholars say, will be among many obstacles facing Waldon, 39, when his trial begins today. Having opted to defend himself in a capital case, the former Navy deep-sea diver is navigating a largely uncharted course through the judicial system. One wrong turn, experts say, and he could end up on Death Row.

Waldon is among the few Southern California defendants who have gone to court in propria persona-- without the aid of professional lawyers--on death penalty cases. Although San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties have had highly publicized “pro per” capital trials during the last decade, they remain extraordinarily rare.

When they do occur, juries have an unusual job. As they consider heinous crimes, they must also evaluate legal arguments offered by the people accused of committing them.

The defendants, meanwhile, come to court saddled with varying degrees of ignorance about the law. And their attempts to be effective advocates are further hindered, experts say, by how jurors view their decision to defend themselves.

Especially in capital cases, jurors are tempted to look askance at a defendant who has himself for a client, said John W. Poulos, a UC Davis law professor who is writing a book about the inherent dangers of self-representation.

“They think, ‘Apparently this guy is so guilty that no lawyer will represent him.’ Or, ‘He’s such a rogue that he spurns the very law we design to protect him, and a guy like that must be guilty,’ ” Poulos said.

Laura Berend, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, agreed. Even jurors who could imagine representing themselves against lesser charges, she said, tend to distrust a defendant who takes on his own capital case.

“You may put a Band-Aid on a (your own) cut, but you’re not going to cut your throat and try to patch it up yourself,” she said. “That’s a level of risk that most people wouldn’t be comfortable taking.”

Waldon has pleaded not guilty to 24 separate counts , including murder, rape, arson, armed robbery and the malicious killing of animals.

The most violent of his alleged crimes occurred, police say, during a two-week crime rampage in 1985. Just before Christmas, Waldon allegedly shot two people to death, ignited a fire that killed a teen-ager and injured another man. He is also accused of repeatedly raping one woman, robbing several others and bludgeoning to death two small dogs.

“Have you read the charges I’m accused of?” he asked during a telephone interview from his jail cell. “I’m charged with three murders that I didn’t commit. I’m charged with an attempted murder. I’m charged with a whole host of horrendous, horrible other crimes.”

He continued: “I wish those crimes never occurred. But I wasn’t there. . . . Mercy, what can I feel? I can feel sorry that I’ve been accused. I can cry with the victims and sympathize with them for the brutality they suffered. But that doesn’t mean I did it.”

In May, 1986, the crimes earned Waldon a place on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. One month later, the FBI’s photo of a shaggy, bearded Waldon led a detective to recognize him. Picked up on a traffic violation, he was already in jail under an assumed name.

He hardly looks the part today. A trim, soft-spoken man with a dark mustache and short, graying hair, Waldon sat in court last week in a suit and tie. When he addressed the court, he was respectful, beginning his arguments with the words “Your honor.”

But it takes more than politeness to win a murder trial, and many lawyers say Waldon is uniquely ill-equipped to do that.

That belief stems in part from Waldon’s insistence on going it alone. Waldon has two court-appointed advisory lawyers whom the county pays to help with his defense. But since May, when he told Judge David M. Gill that the two lawyers were “prosecution agents,” he has banished them to sit in the audience and refused to speak to either one.

Then there is the issue of his identity. Sometime during his five years in pretrial confinement, Waldon decided he is a Cherokee Indian whose true name is Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah.

At his request, Gill now calls him “Mr. Sequoyah” in court. The prosecutor still uses “Mr. Waldon.”

Under court rules, judges are required to warn a criminal defendant about the probable pitfalls of self-representation. If that fails to discourage him, and if the defendant is deemed to be mentally competent to understand the risk, permission must be granted.

Waldon asked to defend himself in 1987, claiming he had had “numerous problems” with his attorney. He won that right in 1989, over the strong objections of his attorney, Geraldine Russell, who said Waldon had a “thought disorder . . . which prevents him from making this decision rationally with his eyes wide open.”

That can happen, said Poulos, the UC Davis professor, because the law does not require defendants to prove they will do a good job of defending themselves. All it requires, in essence, is that they understand the dangers of doing a bad job.

“Someone can be pathologically paranoid and still be competent to represent himself. Even if a person were illiterate, they would not be disqualified,” he said, noting that many of these self-representation issues in capital cases are unresolved in California, leaving judges to decide for themselves.

“The problem is the (California Supreme Court decision that established the right to self-representation) did not contemplate the mentally incompetent defendant defending himself in a capital trial,” said Steven E. Feldman, a certified specialist in criminal law who has defended several people charged with capital crimes in San Diego. “When someone like Billy Ray Waldon comes along, it slips through the cracks. . . . They will make errors that will result in their death.”

But last week, as the prosecutor in Waldon’s case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Carpenter, prepared to go to trial, he said he wasn’t going to claim victory until he hears the verdict.

“In lots of respects, he might be his own worst enemy,” Carpenter said of Waldon. “In other respects, who knows? The jury may decide there’s a mind worth saving there.”