Lawyers try, fail to withdraw from Duncan case

BOISE — Lawyers serving as standby counsel for Joseph Edward Duncan III asked today to withdraw from his death penalty case, saying they could not ethically proceed, but a federal judge refused.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge directed that the lawyers remain with Duncan, saying he would not allow the case to be delayed any longer.

Jury selection resumed Wednesday after a more than three-month delay following Duncan's request to represent himself. During that time he underwent a battery of psychological tests and Lodge ruled late last month that he was mentally competent to serve as his own attorney.

"We are not mouthpieces, we are not gunslingers ... that do the bidding of someone whose rationale we do not share and whose view of the world" is irrational, said Judy Clarke, one of Duncan's standby counsel. "We feel that the request is beyond what we should be asked to do ... beyond what our professional ethics allow us to do."

Duncan is facing the death penalty after pleading guilty to 10 federal charges in the high-profile kidnapping of two northern Idaho children and the murder of one.

Duncan doesn't intend to present any evidence about his own traumatic childhood or mental state as Clarke and his other standby lawyers recommend, she said. Instead, he apparently intends to base his defense on what Clarke said was an irrational and incomprehensible world view.

"We do not share his theory of the case to the extent we can understand his theory of the case," Clarke said.

Duncan said the lawyers' move was a surprise to him, and he supported their request to step down, but Lodge would have none of it.

"Your statement was eloquent, just not relevant," Lodge told Clarke.

It could be the first of many hiccups resulting from Duncan's decision to represent himself. During jury selection, four potential jurors said seeing him act as his own lawyer could affect their ability to be impartial.

"If he is able to come face to face with the little girl, that's ethically wrong," one potential juror said. "That's not right — it's like abusing her again."

Duncan, a convicted pedophile from Tacoma, pleaded guilty in December to federal charges in the kidnapping of Shasta Groene, then 8, and her brother Dylan, 9. The children were taken from their Coeur d'Alene home in May 2005 after Duncan fatally bludgeoned the children's mother, Brenda Groene, their 13-year-old brother Slade, and the mother's fiance, Mark McKenzie.

After sexually abusing both children, Duncan shot and killed the boy at a campsite in western Montana. The girl was rescued on July 2, 2005, when a waitress spotted her with Duncan in a Coeur d'Alene restaurant.

Duncan earlier pleaded guilty in state court to murdering McKenzie and Slade and Brenda Groene. Sentencing on those pleas is not at issue in the federal court proceedings.