SPRINGFIELD - Every clown has a down day occasionally, and Orlando Melendez had one this week in Springfield District Court.

During a pretrial hearing Thursday, a judge rejected Melendez's plan to showcase his juggling skills for jurors at his upcoming trial.

"The keystone to his defense is: He's literally a clown," the defendant, writing in the third person, explained in a motion that elicited a one-word response from Judge Robert Murphy.

"Denied," the judge wrote on the motion.

Melendez, 20, is charged with using a toy gun during an attempted robbery of a Forest Park convenience store in December. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempting to commit a crime and was ordered held on $5,000 bail.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin on June 8. Melendez, who fired his court-appointed lawyer, has represented himself since February.

During Thursday's hearing, Melendez outlined his defense strategy in a hand-written motion declaring he was, in effect, just clowning around when he walked into a Cumberland Farms store at 3:15 a.m. and allegedly demanded money from the register.

Juggling three wads of paper for 20 seconds would show jurors that Melendez is a serious clown, and prove the attempted robbery was just a misunderstanding, the motion states.

The juggling act would be "not only the simplest, but the only possible proof that the defendant is a jester," the motion said. To deny the request would be to deny the defendant's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to a fair trial, the motion added.

Murphy, who is presiding over the case, denied the request anyway, without elaborating.

He approved several other defense motions, including a request to sequester jurors and witnesses and to question prospective jurors about their willingness to believe testimony from police officers.

The trial is expected to last one or two days, with testimony from four to seven witnesses, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Prendergast stated in a report to the judge.