Friday, April 10, 1998 | 10:30 a.m.
The old saying is that a person who represents himself has a fool for a client.
"That's always the case," Justice of the Peace Bill Jansen said. "But try to tell that to the fool."
Yet that is just what District Judge Jeff Sobel tried to do Thursday with a 34-year-old South African charged with murder in the love-triangle slaying of his estranged wife's boyfriend.
Sebastian Stephanus Bridges insists he wants to represent himself at his May 26 trial despite Sobel's warnings that it literally could be a fatal decision because prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Sobel had lectured Bridges in the past, bluntly telling the polite and well- spoken defendant that his chances of winning were nil if he acted as his own lawyer in the complicated arena of a capital murder trial.
"I still say it's a bad idea to represent yourself if you don't want to die, if you don't want the death penalty," the judge reiterated Thursday at a hearing to determine if Bridges is mentally competent to give up his right to a lawyer.
Two psychologists and a psychiatrist testified that he is, although all three diagnosed him as having a "Narcissistic personality" that leads him to believe he can represent himself better than the Clark County public defender's office.
Sobel almost pleaded with Bridges to have a deputy public defender sitting with him to advise him on the law, trial techniques and legal documents.
Bridges said he had standby counsel at his preliminary hearing and the constant whispered advice distracted him. He declined Sobel's offer.
There is no question under Nevada law that Bridges has the right to represent himself, but it is not something that judges or prosecutors relish.
Chief District Judge Myron Leavitt said it puts judges in a precarious position while trying to maintain a posture of impartiality.
By necessity, judges routinely provide some help to a defendant on legal approaches or lecture about why a certain tact can't be taken. But one might be perceived by a jury to be favoring a defendant while the other might imply the opposite.
Although defendants representing themselves inevitably agree that they will abide by legal rules, Leavitt lamented, "They generally don't know the rules of evidence."
He said that can put judges in an awkward position.
Leavitt cited an example of a defendant who didn't object when hearsay evidence was being solicited by a prosecutor. The judge, he said, had to decide whether to stop the trial himself and rule the evidence improper or let the trial proceed with illegal evidence and risk a reversal on an appeal.
Jansen added that sometimes he feels a duty to step in and correct an error made by a self-representing defendant "to protect the record" and keep the case on track.
Leavitt said that trials are usually longer when a defendant represents himself and he added, "I've never seen a such a defendant win a criminal case."
Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said prosecutors have to be "extra cautious" not to ask some questions because defendants don't know enough to object.
"We have to play both prosecutor and defense attorney," he said.
Herndon told of prosecuting a man charged with auto theft and winning an easy conviction.
"He had no business representing himself," the prosecutor said. "I haven't seen anyone competent enough to represent himself. It's highly inadvisable for any criminal to represent himself."
But Bridges did that at his preliminary hearing in Justice of the Peace James Bixler's courtroom and is determined to do it again at his trial.
And despite Bixler's warnings, Bridges made statements implicating himself in the slaying.
One reason Bridges may have decided to represent himself is for the ability to confront his ex-wife, 46-year-old Laurie Bridges.
At the preliminary hearing, the questioning went beyond the Oct. 26 incident that ended in the shooting death of her 27-year-old boyfriend and the burying of his body in the desert just across the California state line.
Bridges also questioned his spouse about their relationship, the reasons she left him and her affair with the murder victim.
Bridges sometimes fought back tears when his emotions and frustrations bubbled to the surface, begging the judge to let him revisit the details of the failed relationship.
While Bixler gave him some limited opportunities, it is unlikely Sobel will permit such questions when there is a jury in the courtroom for Bridges' trial.
Laurie Bridges had wept on the witness stand as she recalled how she had to help pile rocks on the body of Hunter Blatchford during the burial on an almost moonless night.
Although the defendant challenged some of his wife's details of the deadly confrontation, Bridges didn't dispute that he was the one who fired a single bullet into Blatchford's abdomen. But he did indicate that the bullet was fired accidentally.
Bridges is charged with kidnapping, robbery, murder and battery with a deadly weapon.
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