Swiss Criminal Procedure Code
(Criminal Procedure Code, CrimPC)

¹ The dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings shall ap­point a duty de­fence law­yer if:

a.

in the event of the man­dat­ory ap­point­ment of a de­fence law­yer:

1.

the ac­cused, des­pite be­ing re­ques­ted to do so by the dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings, fails to ap­point a de­fence law­yer of choice, or

2.

the de­fence law­yer of choice has been dis­missed or has resigned and the ac­cused fails to ap­point a new de­fence law­yer of choice with­in the time lim­it set;

b.

the ac­cused lacks the ne­ces­sary fin­an­cial means and re­quires a de­fence law­yer to safe­guard of his or her in­terests.

² A de­fence law­yer is re­quired to safe­guard the in­terests of the ac­cused in par­tic­u­lar if the mat­ter is not a minor case and the case in­volves fac­tu­al or leg­al is­sues that the ac­cused is not qual­i­fied to deal with alone.

³ A case is no longer re­garded as minor if it is prob­able that a cus­todi­al sen­tence of more than 4 months or a mon­et­ary pen­alty of more than 120 daily pen­alty units may be im­posed on con­vic­tion.⁶⁴