Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Everyone wants to fire their public defender, because you get what you pay for.

The judge appointed the public defender's office generally. The deputy P.D. who represents you was assigned by that office, not by the court.

Representing yourself is a terrible idea. Even lawyers generally should not do that. If you think your lawyer is doing a bad job, just wait to see what kind of job you can do on your own. And if the lawyer's ideas about how to proceed are very different from yours, it's likely that she is right and you are wrong.

Help? You can hire a private attorney at any time to take over the case. Other than that, there is no 'help' remaining. In several decades of observing Public Defenders in action in court, I have seen very few that could be called 'awful'. Most are well experienced and dedicated. Many defendants misunderstand the reality of the system. When you fire private counsel, they will 'hold your hand' and talk to you at length, that is what you pay us the 'big bucks' for. The PD has 20-40 cases on calendar each day. You don't get individual attention, and they aren't there to listen to you complain about how terribly unfair the system is to punish you, just because you got caught [allegedly] committing a crime. If serious about hiring counsel to help you in this, and if this is in SoCal courts, feel free to contact me.