You can win a criminal appeal. I’ll tell you how. Specifically, I’ll tell you what I do to fight and
win my own cases.
There are three main elements of what needs to be done.
The first one is it’s important to find the rights violations. How has a person’s rights been
violated? And there are many ways a person’s rights can be violated. Thank goodness in this
country and in this State we have many many rights. There’s a right against improper character
evidence being used against a person for example. There’s also a right against using a person’s
own statements against them if they’re obtained in an illegal way. There are many many other
rights and I always look through the record on my cases to see what happened, where were
right violations, the client might know about some of them but there’re many of them that only
a lawyer would be able to find. So what are those rights violations – that’s the most important
one.
The second element, the second element is when I have a client who’s actually innocent, it’s
very important for me to highlight that in the appeal. And I’ll tell you why. Judges are human
beings and if a judge sees a defendant who was convicted of a crime and now we’re asking for
an appeal, and they believe that that person is innocent, that judge is much more likely to
overturn a conviction. Judges watch to overturn convictions for people who are innocent of the
crimes they are accused of and they want to sustain verdicts and sustain convictions for people
who they believe are guilty. So that’s the second element – showing the innocence of a client
who is innocent.
And the third element that’s very important for criminal appeals to win is to explain how the
issue, that we’re discussing, how the issue affects many different people. And the higher up you
get in courts, whether it’s the state court system or the federal court system all the way to the
US Supreme Court, the higher you get, the more important it is to show this is not just about
my client. This is not just about one person. This is about hundreds or thousands of people
whose rights are being violated because this practice is happening or because the law is being
applied inconsistently – one way by one court, another way by another court. So showing how
the rights violations affect many people. That’s one of the most important things in trying to
win a criminal appeal. These three strategies are very strong in trying to overturn a criminal
conviction or reduce a sentence, but they’re not the only strategies out there. If you have a
loved one who is in prison and you wanna learn more about what the options are, you may call.
I’m happy to chat with you or have one of the other attorneys in my firm speak with you. Thank
you. Take care.