Lawyers are gathering daily in a Marietta courtroom to watch a rare display of a judge walking the fine line between maintaining order and ensuring a fair trial for a murder defendant representing himself. Each day of the scheduled three-week trial begins with a half-dozen armed Cobb County sheriff’s deputies bringing in defendant Waseem Daker and his many boxes of files and law books, which they’ve searched for dangerous objects, going so far as to remove every staple from documents. Daker is dressed in a suit and tie like the lawyers.
Deputies remain close by to protect witnesses who are being cross-examined by the man accused of murdering Delta flight attendant Karmen Smith in 1995 stabbing her twice in the back, strangling her with a rope, stripping off some of her clothing and wrapping her body under five layers of bedding and hiding her in her own bed. The assailant waited in her home all day for her then 5-year-old son Nicholas to return from school, and stabbed him 16 times.
