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StumbleuponMan who represents himself gets 42 years
Monday, June 30, 2008
DAYTON — The second time Keison Wilkins acted as his own attorney for a felonious assault trial didn't work out so well.
Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Katherine Huffman sentenced Wilkins to 42 years in prison Monday, June 30.
The sentencing capped off a week of Wilkins' antics, which frequently caused Huffman to clear the courtroom. At one point he began yelling about lynchings. On Thursday, he apparently faked a heart attack, collapsing to the floor while uninterested observers watched.
After the "attack," during which medical personnel checked him out and found nothing wrong with him, Wilkins sat in a chair, pretending to be unconscious. When a deputy put an ammonia stick under his nose Wilkins responded, opened his eyes, then went back to feigning unconsciousness.
Wilkins, 33, who has an eighth-grade education, successfully represented himself before. In March 2005, a jury acquitted him of a different felonious assault charge, but a judge convicted him of being a felon in possession of a weapon.
Last week, Wilkins represented himself again, and a jury convicted him Friday of two counts of felonious assault, being a felon in possession of a weapon, firing a gun into a habitation. He was also convicted of gun specifications, which added three years, and of being a repeat violent offender, adding 10 years to his sentence.
It was the second time Wilkins had been tried in that case. In January 2005, two months before his successful defense, Wilkins was represented by an attorney and convicted.
The Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals overruled the convictions from the January 2005 trial, sending it back to Huffman's court for re-trial. The appeals court found Wilkins' attorney was ineffective for failing to object to Reginald Brooks' hearsay testimony.
Brooks, who was shot April 28, 2004, on the 700 block of Faulkner Avenue, testified at trial that someone told him that Wilkins had been hired to kill him.
Huffman had appointed an attorney for Wilkins for last week's trial, but Wilkins said he declined "because I don't trust you or your court."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2057 or lgrieco@DaytonDailyNews.com.
