The United States justice system is designed to safeguard the constitutional protections and rights of those who are accused of crimes. One of those safeguards is your right to appeal a criminal conviction if someone has violated your rights during your arrest or criminal court proceedings. A Loveland appeals lawyer may be able to assess your case and determine whether legal grounds exist for an appeal in your case.
Although not every case is right for an appeal, various reasons may exist in your case that justify an appeal of your criminal conviction. Therefore, you should not give up hope after you have been convicted of a crime. Instead, it might help if you looked to a seasoned criminal lawyer about the potential for an appeal of your conviction.
What is an Appeal?
Some individuals may think that filing an appeal allows them to retry their cases and get a different result. An appeal, however, is not a second shot at a trial. Generally, individuals may not present new evidence in appeals, and the lawyers involved rarely appear in the appellate court, except if the appellate court requests that they appear to make oral arguments, which is very unusual.
Instead, an appeal typically takes place in writing. An appeals lawyer in Loveland may be able to point out mistakes made during a criminal case to argue that the appellate court should overturn the conviction. The state then will respond in writing to the allegations of errors.
Based on these written submissions, the appellate court will review the evidence and the trial transcript. At that point, the court will decide whether mistakes were made that would justify reversing the conviction or sending the case back to the original trial court for further proceedings. Since there is only one appellate court in the state that must consider all appeals individually, receiving a decision about an appeal often takes a lengthy amount of time.
