Judge allows convicted murderer Christopher Coleman to represent himself in court
Christopher Coleman, the Columbia man convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife and two sons in 2011, has been granted a request to represent himself in future court proceedings.
Circuit Court Judge Stephen McGlynn made the decision via Zoom meeting on Wednesday in the presence of Coleman, prosecutors and Coleman’s defense attorney Lloyd M. Cueto.
On Sept. 23, 2019, Coleman, 42, filed a motion for change of counsel to “pro se” status in Monroe County Court, meaning he wants to be his own lawyer. Cueto had been Coleman’s defense lawyer since February 2019, when Coleman’s original lawyer, John J. O’Gara Jr., became a circuit judge in St. Clair County.
“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),” the motion stated. “During and following the recent hearings, Mr. Coleman has found that counsel did not follow through with his promised means of representation.”
McGlynn did, however, appoint Cueto to remain in the case as stand-by counsel.
Coleman has been fighting for a new trial since June 2011. In April 2019, McGlynn granted him an evidentiary hearing to examine the competency of his original defense and consider other physical evidence that was not brought into original arguments.
According to Monroe County State’s Attorney Chris E. Hitzemann, the case will have one more hearing on July 16 before the evidentiary hearing to potentially proceed with a new trial.
At the hearing before McGlynn in April 2019, 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. Judge Milton Wharton had ruled that the photos should not be entered into evidence unless the couple’s genitals were obscured. Jurors found the uncensored photos mistakenly attached to another evidence display.
A date imprinted on the photos by the camera was inconsistent with the date Coleman had said he and Linz began their affair. Jurors 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 2019.
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