Many defendants charged with crimes take the attitude that, "I won't worry too much about it because I can come back on appeal." This is an extremely dangerous attitude to take because the truth of the matter is that very few criminal appeals are successful. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals, on average, reverses the conviction in approximately two percent of the criminal appeals that come before it. These are not good odds. If you can win your case you should do so at the trial level.
Additionally, defendants frequently fail to understand what is possible on appeal. Although an appeal goes before a "higher court" it is not an opportunity to simply retry the case using a different strategy before a different court. Rather, appellate courts are "error correcting" courts. That is, as a general rule, the appellate courts are limited to correcting errors of law or of fact that were made by the trial court and that were objected to by the defendant. If there was no objection before the trial court the error is waived on appeal.
"Jailhouse lawyers" sometimes offer to assist convicted persons with their appeal. Typically, these "lawyers" take the approach that the value of an appellate brief is judged by weight and not by content- that is, if a twenty page brief is good then a 100 page brief is ten times better. They believe that it is better to raise fifteen issues on appeal than it is to raise one good one. This is simply not true.
Firstly, always remember that the purpose of an appellate brief is to persuade the judges. If the judges cannot read the brief, or will not read it, because it is eighty pages of dense and repetitive legal prose then it will not convince the judges of anything. Moreover, if you do not obtain a reversal with one of your three strongest issues then it is guaranteed that you will not obtain a reversal with your remaining ten issues.
It is almost never a good idea to proceed on appeal without a lawyer. Whereas a pro se defendant may have a degree of success in defending himself at trial where the issues are primarily factual the issues on appeal are totally legal. Only a well-trained and experienced lawyer is able to author a convicing appellate brief.
To get a better idea of the criminal appellate process you may download the following documents:
1. Wisconsin criminal appellate briefs. This is a full library of examples of appeals briefs that have been filed in actual criminal appeals. They are free for download.
4. The Seventh Circuit Local Rules of Appellate Procedure. Each circuit has a set of local rules that augment and, in some cases, change the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. If you are appealing to the Seventh Circuit you must read these local rules carefully before proceeding.
If you are researching a criminal law issue a great place to start is the Jensen Defense Wiki. The Wiki contains the content of this site in the searchable Wiki format.
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Milwaukee criminal defense attorney Jeffrey W. Jensen, of the Law Offices of Jeffrey W. Jensen, a Milwaukee law firm with offices located at 735 W. Wisconsin Avenue, Twelfth Floor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has represented persons throughout the State of Wisconsin. If you will face felony charges in either state court or in federal court you should call 414.224.9484. Attorney Jensen regularly appears in Milwaukee County (Milwaukee criminal defense lawyer), Waukesha County (Waukesha criminal defense lawyer, Brookfield criminal defense lawyer), Washington County (West Bend and Germantown criminal defense lawyer), Racine County (Racine criminal defense lawyer), Kenosha County (Kenosha criminal defense lawyer), Brown County (Green Bay criminal defense lawyer), Fond du Lac County (Fond du Lac criminal defense lawyer), and Winnebago County (Oshkosh criminal defense lawyer)
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