Former minister and convicted murderer Matt Baker wants a new lawyer and a new judge on his case.

In a two-page letter to his appellate attorney, Stan Schwieger, which Baker copied to 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother, the 38-year-old explained he is unhappy with the court-appointed attorney’s representation thus far and told the judge he wants to “discharge him.”

Baker also asked that Strother, who presided over Baker’s murder trial in January, recuse himself from the case.

Convicted murderer Matt Baker leaves a courtroom after a hearing earlier this month.
Duane A. Laverty/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

He didn’t make it clear if he wanted Strother to give him a new taxpayer-funded lawyer for his appeal before or after stepping down.

Strother rejected Baker’s motion for a new trial April 1. The judge tentatively has scheduled a hearing for 8:30 a.m. Friday to consider Baker’s requests.

Baker, who served as minister at several Waco-area Baptist churches, was sentenced to 65 years in prison in the April 2006 suffocation and drugging death of his wife, Kari, the mother of his two daughters.

Schwieger, at Baker’s behest, has filed his own motion to withdraw.

“I filed a motion at my client’s request, and that is all I can say about it right now,” Schwieger said.

Schwieger had alleged in a motion for new trial that Baker’s trial attorneys, Guy James Gray and Harold Danford, who represented Baker for free, provided ineffective assistance of counsel for Baker at trial.

However, he withdrew those claims before the April 1 hearing, angering Baker and prompting Baker’s request for a new attorney.

“How can I trust an attorney that will boldly contradict my desires and go against the evidence/information gathered?” Baker wrote in his letter to Schwieger and Strother. “It is because I feel, yet again, violated, as you decided to not utilize the mass of viable information provided to you.”

Baker told Schwieger in the letter that he felt betrayed that Schwieger reportedly told the media that Baker was “fairly represented” at his trial.

“I have little choice but to believe that somehow you and Judge Strother, knowingly or unknowingly, through coersion [sic], conspired from the start and violated my civil rights to have an honest, fair and impartial hearing and to be represented by an attorney,” Baker wrote.

Baker also chided Schwieger for using court-imposed time restraints as an excuse to prepare the motion for new trial.

“Although you constantly complained about the issue of time, my serving a possible 65 years is a stronger issue of time!” Baker wrote.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737

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