California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Weston, 87 Cal.Rptr. 922, 9 Cal.App.3d 330 (Cal. App. 1970):
3 Quite recently, in People v. Marsden, 2 Cal.3d 118, 84 Cal.Rptr. 156, 465 P.2d 44, a judgment was reversed because the trial court refused to listen to proffered specific reasons in support of a motion to have different counsel appointed. (Cf. People v. Johnson, 241 Cal.App.2d 423, 425--439, 50 Cal.Rptr. 598.) We do not interpret the colloquy between defendant and the trial court in this case as coming within the ambit of Marsden. At no point did the court prevent defendant from offering a specific charge of incompetence. It merely told defendant, after he had had his say, that he would have to proceed with his then attorney. Moreover, as we shall see, at his motion for a new trial defendant was given a further full opportunity to support his charge of incompetence and, as we shall also see, his claim lacked substance. Finally it would have been quite uncharacteristic of this particular judge to refuse to listen to anything defendant wanted to bring up. He devoted (see fn. 7, infra) almost a full court day to defendant's motion for a new trial, thoroughly investigating claims of error which many other judges would have brushed off summarily.
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