Ned Mingus impressed former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Too bad for him.

Mingus is a 73-year-old convicted felon serving a life sentence for criminal sexual conduct at Michigan's G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility. Frankly, he's in pretty sorry shape. He reports having Hepatitis C, degenerative joint disease, arthritis, ocular herpes and macular degeneration in both eyes. In prison, he's a vulnerable man.

Representing himself, Mingus filed suit against the prison's medical team members for their alleged indifference to his plight. In a decision issued Tuesday by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, O-Connor -- as part of her post-Supreme Court senior judge duties -- and two other appellate panel members kept alive some but not all of the Mingus suit.

But that's not the peculiarly perverse part.

In his lawsuit, Mingus asked the court to appoint an attorney to represent him. O'Connor and her temporary colleagues, though, declined, reasoning that:

"Although the issues raised by this appeal are complex, we find that Mingus has more than adequately represented himself."

Catch-22, anyone? Is representing oneself poorly the only way to secure the assistance of professional counsel? That takes some careful calibrating: be bad enough to show you need help, but not so bad as to lose everything altogether. Perhaps a few more misspellings might have helped Mingus's cause.

Mingus, for one, had earlier advised judges in a November 2007 filing that "this plaintiff doesn't know the first thing about discovery, personally," and said that "there are documents useful to proving his claims...(but) plaintiff simply doesn't know how to go about getting them."

Take heart, Mr. Mingus: Justice O'Connor evidently has confidence you can learn.