Thomas Hill v. Cindi Curtin

In 2007, a Michigan jury convicted Thomas Hill of armed robbery and carjacking. The trial court sentenced him to concurrent prison terms of twenty to forty years for each conviction. Hill appealed, asserting, among other claims, that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to self-representation when the trial court denied his request to represent himself on the first day of trial but before the jury was empaneled. See Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 807, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975) (holding that a defendant in a state criminal trial has a constitutional *682right to proceed without…