*332Opinion
Defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction on a three count information charging him with robbery committed on February 14, 1968, (count I), robbery committed on January 13, 1968, (count II) and possession of marijuana at the time of his arrest on March 27, 1968, (count III).
The public defender was appointed at the time of the arraignment on May 8, 1968. The public defender acted as defendant’s counsel when defendant pleaded not guilty and when a motion to suppress under section 1538.5 of the Penal Code was made. He continued to act on behalf of defendant when, on August 14, witnesses in support of and in opposition to the motion were heard, the motion was denied, and jury trial was waived. The matter then proceeded on the merits. The two victims of the robberies and one eyewitness were examined by the People and cross-examined by the defense. All three witnesses positively identified defendant. There was no hint of any friction between defendant and his counsel. At the close of the August 14 session the defendant requested and received permission to make two telephone calls “to get some witnesses in.”
The next day, August 15, just before the People called their last witness, the arresting officer, defendant requested permission to represent himself and the discussion set forth in full in the footnote took place.1 The request *333was denied. No defense was presented. Eventually defendant was convicted on all counts, the court finding the robbery charged in count I to have been of the second degree and the robbery charged in count II to have been of the first degree.
Sometime between the day on which defendant was found guilty and his motion for new trial on September 5, 1968, he was given permission to represent himself in another case. He was acquitted. Defendant was then permitted to represent himself at the motion for a new trial in this case. In support of his claim that he had been inadequately represented at the trial, the deputy public defender who had then represented him was called as a witness. The motion was denied.
On appeal defendant contends that: (1) he should have been permitted to represent himself when he requested permission to do so; (2) he received a constitutionally inadequate defense from the public defender; and (3) the evidence does not support his conviction on count II.
1
If defendant had requested to be permitted to represent himself at the outset of the proceedings, it is manifest that the court’s conclusion that he lacked the ability to do so was reached without an adequate canvass of defendant’s competency. (People v. Carter, 66 Cal.2d 666, 672-673 [58 *334Cal.Rptr. 614, 427 P.2d 214]; People v. Addison, 256 Cal.App.2d 18, 23-25 [63 Cal.Rptr. 626].)2 Here, however, the request was not made until the second day of trial, when all but one of the People’s witnesses had testified. It purported to be motivated by inadequate representation, but no specifications of the charge against the deputy public defender were ever offered.3 The question therefore is whether the trial court was bound to interrupt the proceedings and determine the competency of defendant to represent himself, where the request to be permitted to do so was made in the middle of the trial and accompanied by nothing but a general complaint of inadequate representation.
The game of “waive the lawyer” is one in which the accused has little to lose and the People nothing to gain.4 Among sophisticated defendants, an *335attempt to waive the right to counsel at some stage of the proceeding has become a routine ploy. Trial judges complain with some justification that the decisions by which their rulings on such applications are judged have put them into the metaphorical opposite of a strait jacket which is a garment designed to make it impossible for the wearer to do anything wrong. If we held that, on pain of reversal, the court must stop a trial dead in its tracks when a defendant wants “to go pro per,” although he gives no adequate reason for such a demand, we would do nothing but add a joker to a hand that already contains four aces.
We are aware of the fact that it has repeatedly been said that “[i]t is well settled law that if a defendant, during the course of the trial, becomes dissatisfied with the manner in which his counsel has handled his case and wishes to discharge counsel for that reason he has a constitutional right so to do [citation], subject to the supervisory powers of the trial court to see that such discharge does not result in an uninformed and unintelligent waiver of the right to counsel.” (People v. Johnson, supra, 241 Cal.App.2d at p. 437, see also People v. Monk, 56 Cal.2d 288, 299 [14 Cal.Rptr. 633, 363 P.2d 865]; People v. Foust, 267 Cal.App.2d 222, 227-228 [72 Cal.Rptr. 675]; People v. Bourland, 247 Cal.App.2d 76, 84 [55 Cal.Rptr. 357].) In none of these cases, however, was it actually held to have been error to refuse to conduct a hearing on the defendant’s competency on a bare claim of inadequate representation. In Monk the claim of inadequate representation was held to have been asserted too late. In Foust the defendant never did ask to be permitted to represent himself and apparently wanted another attorney appointed. The case merely held that the trial court correctly determined that his attorney was competent. The question of determining the defendant’s competency, therefore, never came up. In Bourland the claim was that defendant had been permitted to represent himself without an adequate inquiry into his competency. The court had, however, appointed a public defender to assist him, and the judgment was affirmed on the basis that the assistance had ripened into representation. In *336Johnson the judgment was reversed because the trial court had not permitted the defendant to specify his reasons for wanting to fire his attorney, but had ordered him gagged instead.
Finding no authority to the contrary we hold that if a defendant, after the start of a trial in which he is represented by counsel, desires to represent himself and no adequate reason for the desired change in representation is given, it is not incumbent on a trial court to stop the proceedings for the purpose of determining whether the defendant is competent to act as his own attorney. (See also People v. Bonville, 267 Cal.App.2d 4, 7-8 [72 Cal.Rptr. 592].)
Without intending to weaken this holding, we do note that lost in the colloquy between the court and defendant there is a stray request for a continuance. Even if the trial court had determined, after proper inquiry, that defendant was competent to represent himself, it would have been entitled to find that the condition on which self representation was requested would have been a “disruption of the orderly processes of justice unreasonable under the circumstances of the particular case.” (People v. Crovedi, 65 Cal.2d 199, 208 [53 Cal.Rptr. 284, 417 P.2d 868]; see also People v. Durham, 70 Cal.2d 171, 191 [74 Cal.Rptr. 262, 449 P.2d 198].)
II.
At his motion for a new trial defendant was given every latitude to prove ineffective representation at the trial. The deputy public defender who had represented him was sworn as a witness. In response to a question by the district attorney5 the deputy testified that the fact that certain witnesses were not subpoenaed for the trial was “based upon a discussion of the case with Mr. Weston and how we would handle the case on the date of trial.” It was his firm conclusion as an attorney not to call these witnesses. Defendant then started to examine the deputy who testified that his reason for not calling the witnesses was not that he thought they would either hurt or help the defendant. He had not subpoenaed them and could not recall whether he talked to them over the telephone or whether he sent an investi*337gator to talk to them. Significantly defendant never asked him for his true reason for not calling the witnesses.
No incompetence whatever was shown. All that the trial court knew is that the defendant gave his lawyer the names and addresses of certain witnesses, whom the lawyer did not subpoena and possibly did not even interview and that his reason for not subpoenaing them was neither a belief that they would hurt his client, nor a hope that they would help him. The proposed witnesses apparently would have testified to an alibi. (See fn. 5, supra.)
The record reeks with the suggestion, strongly reinforced by defendant’s failure to inquire into the deputy’s real reason for not calling the witnesses, that defendant had furnished him with names of two supposed alibi witnesses, indicating at the same time that they were willing to perjure themselves to support a defense. Naturally, if that was the case, the deputy was under no duty even to talk to the witnesses. (In re Branch, 70 Cal.2d 200, 210-211 [74 Cal.Rptr. 238, 449 P.2d 174].) If we are wrong in our surmise, still it was the defendant’s burden to prove ineffective representation, not the People’s to disprove it. (People v. Reeves, 64 Cal.2d 766, 774 [51 Cal.Rptr. 691, 415 P.2d 35].)
III.
The claim that the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction on count II rests on a slim reed indeed.
Count II charged defendant with a robbery on January 13, 1968. The victim was a gas station attendant who fully identified defendant as the person who robbed him of $200 at gun point some time during his shift between midnight and 9 a.m. The exact time of the robbery was never established. After the robbery was complete the victim fired his gun at defendant and defendant fired back. Both missed. No other evidence was offered by either side.
Later, after defendant’s motion for a new trial was denied and the court was going over defendant’s probation report, the court’s attention was drawn to an arrest of defendant which took place on January 13, 1968; defendant was released on January 25. Defendant agreed that he had been arrested on January 13. In an ambiguous sort of way he then again (see fn. 5, supra) claimed that that arrest had taken place before the gas station robbery. The court then instituted an informal inquiry with the police precinct station where defendant had been detained. The district attorney returned with a report to the effect that the arrest had taken place at 12:10 p.m., while a review of the “reports and transcript” showed that the robbery *338had taken place at 2:30 a.m. Using somewhat faulty arithmetic he advised the court that the arrest had succeeded the robbery by eight hours. The following colloquy then ensued: “The Court: The 25th. The Bailiff: He was released on the 13th of January. The Court: What time? The Bailiff: At 11:25 a.m. and booked at 12:10 p.m. This is after noon. Mr. Burnett: 11:25 a.m.? The Bailiff: Yes, and booked at 12:10 p.m.” (Italics added.)
Defendant now argues, in effect, that he must have been in jail at the time of the robbery if he was released at 11:25 a.m. While even that conclusion is hardly compelling, it is perfectly obvious that everybody was talking at once and the reporter apparently did not get everything down right.6 Certainly the court did not understand whatever it was told as indicating anything inconsistent with a robbery in the early morning hours of January 13.7
The judgment is affirmed.
Aiso, J., and Reppy, J., concurred.