Criminal Appellate Lawyer

If you or someone you know has been convicted of a crime, it is important to consult with  a criminal appellate attorney who is experienced in appeals, writs of habeas corpus, and other post-conviction means of getting the conviction overturned.

An appeal is a process by which a panel of judges reviews what happened during the trial. If the appellate judges find that “legal errors” occurred during the trial, they have the authority to reverse the conviction based on those legal errors. These legal errors can be a number of things: excluding important defense evidence; allowing prosecution evidence that should have been excluded; incorrect jury instructions; juror misconduct; improperly excluding jurors based on race or gender; prosecutorial misconduct; constitutional violations; errors concerning the sentence; etc.

In 1993, Gary Kollin was appointed by the United States Supreme to represent the petitioner John Angus Smith in the case of Smith v. United States. A link to that opinion and the recording of Gary Kollin’s oral argument before the United States Supreme Court is available by this link.

The United States Supreme Court only permits approximately 80 cases to be orally argued before the court each year. There are only approximately 7,000 lawyers alive at any one in the ENTIRE country who can state that he argued before the highest court of this nation.

About The Appeal Process

An appeal is vastly different from a trial. Unlike a trial where everything happens live and in court, an appeal occurs mostly on paper. The process begins when the attorney files what is called a “notice of appeal” in the trial court. Once the transcripts and the rest of the record on appeal are prepared, the appeals attorney then reviews the entire record, looking for those legal errors that can result in the conviction getting overturned. The attorney then files what are called “briefs” in the appeals court. The briefs identify the legal errors and argue to the appeals court why the conviction should be reversed.

A habeas corpus or post conviction relief petition is like an appeal except that it usually concerns information that was not presented at the defendant’s trial. These may also be known as a 3.850 proceeding in Florida or a Rule 2254 or Rule 2255 proceeding in federal court. Two of the most common arguments made in this type of appellate case are that the defendant’s conviction should be reversed based on “ineffective assistance of counsel” or on “newly discovered evidence.” That is, if there is helpful information that was not discovered at the time of trial or if the defense attorney simply failed to present it, this could be a reason for reversing the defendant’s conviction.

Criminal Appellate Expert lawyer Gary Kollin handles all types of criminal appeals, habeas corpus petitions, and other post-conviction remedies.