The First District Court of Appeal has affirmed a trespass conviction from Alachua County, holding that a defendant who represented himself and personally asked for a bench trial validly waived his right to a jury, and that any error in the colloquy was invited.
Derrick Lamar Walker argued that the evidence was insufficient and that his oral jury waiver was invalid. The court rejected the first argument based on the testimony of the property’s operations manager and the police officer who warned Walker he could not return, after which he returned twice.
On the waiver, the court acknowledged the rule from Sansom v. State, 642 So. 2d 631, 632 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994), that “mere failure to object to a bench trial does not constitute a valid waiver of the right to trial by jury, even where the defendant remains silent following counsel’s oral waiver purportedly on behalf of the defendant.” But Walker had represented himself after a valid Faretta hearing, asked about a bench trial himself, and twice confirmed on the record at later pretrial hearings that he wanted one. “Unlike in Sansom v. State, this record is not a case of Walker’s silence after defense counsel’s oral waiver of a jury trial on his behalf.”
The court added that even if the colloquy were deficient, “such error was invited,” and “Walker’s representation by counsel on appeal does not avoid application of the invited error doctrine to his self-representation at trial.”
Download the full opinion (PDF)
Citation: Walker v. State, No. 1D2025-1997 (Fla. 1st DCA Oct. 14, 2026) (Roberts, Bilbrey, and Nordby, JJ., concurring).
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