I am really confused and hope someone can help! My man is in the middle of and appeal. His parents were going to hire a lawyer for the appeal however the court appointed a private practice lawyer to the case. His parents have been speaking with this lawyer and feel that he is very knowledgable of the case and actually sound as if this is the lawyer they will stick with. My question is this: How good are state appointed lawyers? I have heard a lot of negitivity towards them and I am so worried that my baby's only chance to come home early will be wasted if we go with this lawyer. I have never dealt with appeals nor the system and so I am completly lost! This lawyer said that we have appealable issues however we need to keep in mind that very few appeals actually see an over turn in the verdict. My man has a very confusing case. He got a DUI w/ a GBI upgrade which has made him a "violent offender" @ 85%. We are not fighting the DUI what we are fighting is the GBI upgrade soley due to the fact that the acident in trial was proven to be unavoidable for a "sober" person let alone someone with alcohol in his system. To top that off it is not cut and dry on how this by stander was injured now at what point he got hurt. No witnesses saw anything infact no one even knew someone was injured. This was not the type of accident that involved 1 car hitting another, This accident had already happend prior to my man's accident. There was an over turned vehical in his lane and the VAN infront of him swerved last minute to avoid it. In the mean time my man's tire went flat due to debree from the 1st accident and he lost control of the car nicking the over turned vehical. The over turned vehical had no one in it. They tried to say that this gentleman got injured because when my man hit the overturned car the bumper from that car flew and struck this man in the head. All the witnesses at the scene said that the bumper had already been off prior to my man striking the vehical and they did testing on the bumper and it came up negitive. Therefore the judge said in his ruling that he did not know what hit the guy but he "knows" it had to of happend from his accident. So really there is no evidence or even a lead to what could have connected my man's accident to this gentleman's injury. To me this sounds like a horrible judgment based off assumtion and not facts. The only facts in the case were the police reports, the accident reconstructor (which ruled it unavoidable), and the alcohol analysis (who said the level of alchol my man had would have only impeared him 100th of a second) which would not have made a diffrence in the outcome of this accident. How can this happen???? SOme help please!!!

You can review his record at www.calbar.org (http://www.calbar.org) to see if he has any actions against him, how long he's been in law, etc. The other thing, GOOGLE his name and see if you can find any information relative to him.

The best attorney is one that talks to you and one that is knowledgeable in the case law. You can have OJ's lawyers on your case and if they don't respond to you then really, what good are they? KWIM? I always say go w/ the gut and if you feel this lawyer is good, then use this lawyer. Just because you "buy" an attorney doesn't mean that you're going to get good representation.

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Trial conviction: Appeal is automatic. The trial lawyer should file a notice of appeal, specifying any known issues and the record on appeal. That notice is usually filed at sentencing. There is a right to representation on appeal.

Plea bargain: He should ask the trial lawyer if there is any right to appeal. Sometimes appeal rights are waived as part of the deal. Some issues are so big that that they can survive waivers (Judge doesn't follow teh law at sentencing, for instance). SOem appeal issues require first getting a Certificate of Probable Cause from teh trial court. There's a very limited time to get a Notice of appeal on file.

Writs:
Where appeals can't be brought, review would be by writ of Habeus Corpus, arguing denial of Equal Protection and/or Due Process. For info re Writs in CA, teh place to begin is the book CEB Writs and Appeals (at the nearest law library). Inmate writs aren't usually done very well, so if you can afford it you should hire a lawyer to prepare it. Writs involve turning over all teh rocks, so they don't come cheap. To try to get an appointed attorney on a Writ, contact the regional administrative organization that farms out appointed appeals to various lawyers. An example is the Central California Appellate Project in San Francisco.



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