What is an Appeal?
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Generally an appeal is a request for review from a higher court to reverse a legal ruling or final judgment. In Texas criminal law, someone who has been convicted of a crime must request a timely appeal in order to have any chance of getting the conviction overturned. In this video, Houston criminal defense lawyer, Jim Story briefly discusses the criminal law appeal process.
Houston Criminal Law Video Transcription
An appeal is a legal process that begins after a trial, or after a jury trial, or after a plea of guilty. The first process would be that trial process, where you either plead guilty or you go to a bench trial, which is a trial to the judge, or you go to a jury trial, which is a trial to your peers. And for the purposes of an appeal, you’ve been found guilty or you’ve pled guilty. After that, you have 30 days, once you’re sentenced, you have 30 days to affect an appeal.
An appeal is a legal process where you say, attorneys do this for you, that you have been– there was a mistake made in the trial or the plea process, and that it is wrong and we should go back to the beginning. The trial should be voided, and that you should be granted a new trial. And that sort of thing. It puts us back to square one in many cases.
