Court of Appeal Conviction Appeals

If convicted at the Crown Court you must appeal within 28 days and time runs from conviction . If your sentence is adjourned appeal conviction straight away do not wait for sentence .

If convicted in the Magistrates Court you need to appeal to the Crown Court within 14 days .

For Crown Court Appeals especially if you have to instruct a new legal team you might fall outside of the 28 day period - Don't Panic . The Court will consider granting you an extension provided there are good reasons and you have good grounds of appeal . But delay too long without good reasons and the Court may decline you even if you have a good ground .

If you are refused by the Court of Appeal Single Judge you must renew your application to the full court within 14 days , otherwise without permission to renew late you must go to the CCRC .

If you appealed to the Crown Court your avenue then rests with the Divisional Court . The Supreme Court only hears highly technical appeals on points of Law ........it will be rare you will get there .

In the Court of Appeal in accordance with the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 the Court can only quash a conviction if it considers it unsafe . This may be due to fresh evidence , errors in law or some other substantial reason .

Remember the Court of Appeal is not interested in your innocence only whether the conviciton is safe or not . It is a Court of Review not a Court of rehearing so you cannot simply re-run your original trial before the Court of Appeal . You have a burning sense of injustice about things that went wrong in your case , mistakes that were made .......

But take a step back and look at your case objectively , if it helps imagine you are a judge looking at your case ........what error or fresh evidence shows your conviction is unsafe . This is not about re-runnign your case for a different result .

This is always difficult to answer and its probably easier to start with things that do not work :

• My Barrister was changed at the last minute
• The Judge was biased
• The Jury got it wrong
• It was a conspiracy
• The Complainant lied
• The forensic evidence proved I didn't do it

Areas likely to give rise to a successful ground could be :

• I have fresh evidence which helps prove I was innocent
• My barrister made some serious mistakes
• The Judge made a serious error
• Evidence was not disclosed
• My Trial Solicitors failed to investigate properly

It is important to focus on the Courts ultimate test of unsafety and test every complaint you have whether if proved to be true it would make a signficant difference to the outcome - you need to be objective in that assessment . Always remember that the Court of Appeal is not a venue to re-run the case in the Crown Court .

resh Evidence is a complex issue and you should see our detailled article on fresh evidence .

In basic terms this should be evidence not available at the time of the original trial . The Court tests it against Section 23 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 and will want to be satisfied that :

( a ) It is capable of belief ;

(b) whether it appears to the Court that the evidence may afford any ground for allowing the appeal;

(c)whether the evidence would have been admissible in the proceedings from which the appeal lies on an issue which is the subject of the appeal; and

(d)whether there is a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the evidence in those proceedings.]

The Court can either agree to admit the evidence or here it by a procedure called "de benese" which means it will consider it and decide whether to admit it afterwards .

Applicants need to be able to show how the fresh evidence was obtained and will be asked where appropriate to provide a "gogna" statement which is a docuemnt setting out how the evidence was obtained .

Overall we come back to the relevance and if the Court admits the evidence it must still be satisfied this renders the conviction unsafe .

It is a sad reality that in the pressure keg of criminal trials sometimes mistakes are made . It is highly likely your legal team won't ask every question of a witness you would like . But does that mean you have a ground of appeal ?

The answer is usually no . However if your legal team makes such serious mistakes that the conviction is unsafe clearly the answer is yes . But what does that actually mean ?

In a case of R v B [ 2012 ] our Client had asked his original team to investigate 4 distinct areas of records becuase he believed it would help show his innocence . The Solicitors sent the request to the Barrister , it was forgotten about . When we investigated that evidence the combination of that material could have made a real difference to the jurys deliberations the Court concluded - the conviction was quashed .

So finding errors - is not enough you need to be able to show what the effect of those errors were on the safety of the conviction .

A regular complaint is that you were advised to plead guilty and now wish to challenge your conviction . Pleading guilty is a signficant hurdle and the Courts have made clear that they will only set aside that guilty plea if you can show there is signfciant evidence to demonstrate it was wrongly entered and that the conviction is unsafe . The fact that you want to now argue the appeal is not enough nor that you think you have some good grounds .

Do you have evidence which strongly shows that you are innocent or that you should never have been advised to plead guilty ( being objective ) then you might get closer to persauding the Court to overturn your Guilty Plea .

You need to start by identifying what you say went wrong remembering the ultimate test the Court has to apply . Keep focussed on the fact that this is not a re run of the Crown Court Trial and it is not about the odd question you say should have been asked of a witness .

What were the big errors ? What is your fresh evidence and how does it show the verdict should be different ? If the judge made mistakes what will the Court say ?

Imagine yourself as a Court of Appeal Judge and look at what you want to advance - what do you think the answer would be ? test your arguments against that standard .

If you get to the point of having winning points think about using a solicitor who specialises in appeals . If not or you do not qualifiy for legal aid or can't afford private representation - then take time to write structured and succint grounds of appeal . The Judges don't need your whole history , they will get a summary of the evidence . Focus on what you say the grounds are and why they make your conviction unsafe . Repeating the point several times will not improve it .

Above all don't take bad points before the Court focus on the best you have and back it up .

It is an unfortunate fact that from time to time Judges make mistakes in the way they manage a trial or sum up the case to the jury . These days the judges are given a detailed manual of specimen directions and so tend not to make the sort of mistakes that were seen in years gone by . However the complexity of the Criminal Law these days means it is easy for a Judge to go wrong .

Forget about any argument that the Judge was biased and concentrate on the errors .

• What was the mistake
• What should the judge have done
• What was the consequence of the mistakes

Taking that methodical approach will help you or your appeal lawyer determine whether it amounts to a ground which the Court will entertain .

In fact just because you might think the sentence is unfair or harsh will not be enough for the Court of Appeal . The Court can only intervene if the sentence is deemed to be "manifestly excessive" . That means it is so far wide of the mark that the Court can accept the Judge simply got it wrong .

Judges for most offences have very specific guidelines and will approach the sentence on the basis of those guidelines . However even so there are elements for judgment and also particualr problems arise when a Judge has to deal  with a lot of sentences and consider totality .

Check the guideline first , work out how the Judge could have got it wrong and why . This will then help you decide whether there is any argument to be made .

This is very difficult to predict . It can take quite a long time to investigate a complex appeal .

Should you be lucky enough to have grounds and an appeal can be lodged it can take several weeks to complete pre lodging checks .

In addition the case has to then be prepared by a Court of Appeal Lawyer and sent to a Single Judge - these are High Court Judges who have a busy schedule and it can usually take 6-12 weeks to get a decision from the Court .

If you are given permission to appeal by the Single Judge it may take a number of months after that for your appeal to be heard in London - even possibly 12 months or more .

If you are refused permission you have an option to renew the case before the Full Court and this can take a similar amount of time to be heard .