I want to talk today about grounds for appealing
a criminal conviction.
Now, people call me all the time and they
say the judge was biased, that the DA was corrupt,
and the jury made a horrible decision,
they really didn't have a good case.
Well, that's not enough by itself
to form the basis for an appeal.
To appeal successfully, you have to be
able to demonstrate more than that.
You have to be able to show that there
were some legal errors that occurred
at trial that prevented the person from getting
a fair trial.
So I'm going to talk about the five most
common grounds for appeal.
The first is improper admission of evidence.
So if the judge allows the prosecutor to bring in hearsay
or to talk about the defendant's prior record,
or allows in or admits evidence that should be inadmissible,
that would be a potential grounds for appeal.
The second most common grounds for appeal
is prosecutorial misconduct.
When the DA does something underhanded.
Now, prosecutors are part of law enforcement.
They're supposed to uphold justice,
but they do things that are below board all the time.
So just commenting on inadmissible evidence
or purposely misstating the law or evidence.
A third common ground for appeal is ineffective assistance
of counsel.
That's when we say that the defense attorney did
a bad job that falls below the standard of competence that
is expected.
So for example, maybe there's an alibi witness
that could be very crucial to the defense,
but he doesn't call that person to the stand.
The fourth common grounds for appeal is jury misconduct.
And I'll give you an example, during a trial,
the judge tell the jury all the time
do not discuss the case amongst yourselves,
and do not form an opinion about the case
until all the evidence is presented,
the arguments are made, and it's submitted to you
at the end of the trial.
But let's say the jury convicts a defendant
and afterwards it comes to light that in fact every day
the jury was talking about the case in the lunchroom.
And that some of the jurors had decided,
oh I think he's guilty on even the second day of trial.
In a situation like that, we may be
able to effectively appeal the conviction based
on jury misconduct.
And a fifth common ground for appeals
is insufficient evidence.
This is when a jury returns a guilty verdict,
but there has not been compelling evidence
to support that conviction.
Here at Shouse Law Group, it's our job
to study the trial record with a fine tooth comb
to identify issues like this that would support an appeal.
To present them in a compelling way to the appellate court.
And ultimately, to help our clients