United States v. Nathan L. Hill and Cordell James

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that waiver of counsel was knowing and intelligent despite the district court’s failure to conduct an exhaustive Faretta colloquy
• knowing and intelligent waiver “is demonstrable knowl- edge of the right being surrendered and a formal decision to forego that right”
• “[T]he question is not whether the district judge used a check-off list but whether the defendant understood his options.”
• “Unless it is necessary to give an instruction, it is necessary not to give it, so that the important instructions stand out and are remem- bered.”
• pattern instructions offer “model instructions for occasions when they are appropriate but do[] not identify those occasions; the need for an instruc‐ tion must be determined independently”
• “All a judge can do as a practical matter—all a judge need do as a legal matter—is ensure that the defendant knows his rights and avoids hasty decisions.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).