Nash v. State

Recently, this court has had a resurgence of criminal appeals in which defendants challenge the adequacy of the trial court’s Nelson hearing. This procedural error is treated as a structural or per se error that requires a new trial even when the trial court has made a good faith effort to accommodate the defendant but has failed to address all of the requirements of Nelson. This regrettably is such a case.

In the mid-1990s, this court encouraged the circuit court conference to create a section in the criminal bench book addressing Nelson and Faretta1 hearings. See Gillyard v. State, 704 So.2d…