Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

Re: Judge denied defendant the right to change attorney.

What's your question?

Re: Judge denied defendant the right to change attorney.

There is caselaw that says you have the right to pick your own attorney as long as the court doesn't believe you are taking advantage of the system.

Re: Judge denied defendant the right to change attorney.

This is incomprehensible. I can think of no valid reason for a judge to either think he should or could issue such an order.

I would hesitate to form any judgment, however. An attorney would have to look at the judge's order and the transcript to try to understand why.

I would hope that there is some reason that is not obvious to us here.

However, since you already chose a new attorney, certainly your new attorney should be able to understand this and to sort it out.

Sad to say, but if your new attorney cannot unravel that, maybe he would not be much help anyway.

I think that it is not legitimate for the judge to issue such an order -- but I would really have to see what really happened to know what is going on. It sounds too strange to be real. There has to be something else going on there.

That said, I seriously think you need to talk to an attorney. You might be able to get a free consultation to see if there is anything that a new attorney can propose doing to help you, or not.