Convicted murderer Chris Coleman wants to be his own lawyer. Will a judge let him?
Christopher Coleman, the Columbia man convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife and two sons in 2011, has filed a request to represent himself in future court proceedings.
Coleman, 42, has been fighting for a new trial since June 2011. This April, Circuit Court Judge Stephen McGlynn granted him a yet-to-be-scheduled evidentiary hearing to examine the competency of his original defense and consider other physical evidence that was not brought into original arguments.
Now Coleman has decided his counsel since then also has been insufficient. On Sept. 23, he filed a motion for change of counsel to “pro se” status in Monroe County Court, meaning he wants to be his own lawyer.
“The defendant has notified the court on numerous occasions over the past 3.5 years of his disapproval of appointed counsels handling (of the case),” his motion reads. “During and following the recent hearings, Mr. Coleman has found that counsel did not follow through with his promised means of representation.”
Since February 2019, Coleman’s defense lawyer has been Lloyd M. Cueto, who replaced his original lawyer, John J. O’Gara Jr., now a circuit judge in St. Clair County. Cueto has not responded to multiple calls for comment.
In his motion, Coleman also states that McGlynn has not replied to multiple requests to change counsel.
“Mr. Coleman then, through family sought to hire new counsel which as well was proven unsuccessful,” the motion states.
The BND has reached out to McGlynn’s office for further comment on the case.
Coleman has also requested that if McGlynn should require a hearing on the matter of counsel changes, that it be done electronically though phone or video conference from the correctional facility in Wisconsin, where he is serving his sentence.
At a hearing before McGlynn in April, Cueto argued on Coleman’s behalf that the conviction in the 2009 murders was made on the basis of evidence the jury wasn’t supposed to see.
In Coleman’s trial, jurors found small copies of four explicit images of Coleman and his lover, Tara Lintz, on the back of an evidence display. At the time, Judge Milton Wharton did not want the photos entered into evidence unless the couple’s genitals were obscured. Jurors found the uncensored photos mistakenly attached to another evidence display.
Meta data in the form of a camera date imprinted on the photos was inconsistent with the date that Coleman had said he started the affair. Jurors assumed that Coleman had lied and returned a guilty verdict to the court. He was sentenced to life in prison for strangling his wife, Sheri, and two sons, Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, on May 5, 2009.
In April 2018, Cueto filed a request in the 20th Circuit Court to reconsider Coleman’s conviction based on the meta data the jury had found. McGlynn allowed the process to move forward in March.
This story was originally published October 9, 2019 at 2:49 PM.
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