Case: 18-14236 Date Filed: 10/07/2019 Page: 1 of 3
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 18-14236
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 5:14-cr-00077-CDL-CHW-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
DANIEL ERIC COBBLE,
Defendant-Appellant.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Georgia
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(October 7, 2019)
Before TJOFLAT, JILL PRYOR and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
In this interlocutory appeal, Daniel Eric Cobble challenges the district
court’s order directing his standby counsel to represent him for all pre-trial matters
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and rescinding his ability to represent himself pro se for pre-trial matters. He
contends that before entering the order the district court had to find that he was not
competent to represent himself.1
The “Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments include a ‘constitutional right to
proceed without counsel when’ a criminal defendant ‘voluntarily and intelligently
elects to do so.’” Indiana v. Edwards,
554 U.S. 164, 170 (2008) (quoting Faretta
v. California,
422 U.S. 806, 807 (1975). We have not yet had occasion to
determine whether a district court may impose the sort of restriction the court has
imposed here on an accused who insists on representing himself.
In Gomez-Rosario, the First Circuit approved of restrictions on a pro se
criminal defendant similar to those imposed on Cobble. See United States v.
Gomez-Rosario,
418 F.3d 90, 97-99 (1st Cir. 2005) (persuasive authority). There,
the accused although represented by counsel, filed approximately 95 pro se
motions in a one-year span, many of which were “quite long and packed with
muddled, contradictory, meritless legal argument.”
Id. at 96-97. When he
requested leave to proceed pro se, the district court allowed him to do so only if his
1
We have jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal pursuant to the collateral order
doctrine. See Devine v. Indian River County Sch. Bd.,
121 F.3d 576, 580-81 (11th Cir. 1997),
overruled in part on other grounds by Winkelman ex rel. Winkelman v. Parma City Sch. Dist.,
550 U.S. 516 (2007).
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attorney served as standby counsel and reviewed and screened his motions,
approving those the attorney deemed appropriate.
Id. at 98.
The First Circuit approved of the condition the district court imposed,
concluding that it did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to self-representation.
Id. at 100. The accused was still able to represent himself, address the district
court, such that standby counsel did not “so interfere with his right to self-
representation as to effectively render his right to self-representation meaningless.”
Id. (quotation omitted).
The district court did not err in precluding Cobble from representing
himself in pretrial matters without first finding him incompetent. The motions
Cobble was filing constituted an abuse of the judicial process court. The court
entered the order in the exercise of is inherent power to manage the case.
AFFIRMED.
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