Ohio Criminal Appeals Lawyer Blog

Not only are court appointed counsel poorly paid, they may have to keep the judge happy to get future appointments.

The Honorable Richard S. Sheward of Franklin County told a lawyer that he could "rest assured I am not going to appoint you to any more cases for this kind of nonsense. You appealed it for nothing, that is what you did." So what kind of lawyers will the Honorable Richard S. Sheward appoint to cases in the future? Well his re-election video (you can see here) claims that Honorable Richard S. Sheward "delivers firm and fair justice." It would stand to reason that Sheward will appoint lawyers who do not stand in the way of his "firm and fair justice." If lawyers are made to satisfy judges, no matter how unreasonable they may be, is the lawyer going to do the best job possible for the client or do they have to make sure to keep the judges happy so they can be appointed to future cases?

In the case of State v. Tina Blay, the Honorable Richard S. Sheward made several comments to appointed counsel. He asked appointed counsel "did you go to law school?" When the appointed counsel told the judge that "I am being yelled and screamed at" the Honorable Richard S. Sheward asked "your feelings are hurt?" and later he asked if the appointed counsel could give him an amount of restitution "or would that also hurt your feelings?"

Judge Richard S. Sheward failed to hold a timely hearing when appointed counsel objected to the amount of restitution, and the Honorable Richard S. Sheward was reversed on appeal in State v. Tina Blay, 2010-Ohio-4749. When it came back to his court, Judge Sheward was not happy about the appeal (which had merit according to the Tenth District Court of Appeals).

Judge Sheward told appointed counsel that "this is a court-appointed case" and the appointed counsel "tries to do everything the hard way." Judge Sheward set up a hearing date on the restitution issue beyond the thirty days Blay had to file a timely Notice of Appeal. What if Blay failed to file a notice of appeal and Judge Sheward decided not to have the hearing? Blay would be out of time to file an appeal and would have to ask permission from the Court of Appeals to have an appeal. So Blay filed a Notice of Appeal, won on appeal, and the matter was remanded for a hearing on the restitution issue.

On remand, the Honorable Richard S. Sheward "used the restitution hearing to issue a barrage of berating and belittling remarks towards appellant's counsel. He unabashedly expressed his irritation with appellant's counsel." As a result of using the opportunity to berate and belittle Blay's counsel instead of conducting a meaningful hearing on the restitution issue, the Honorable Richard S. Sheward denied Blay "a meaningful opportunity to be heard on the issue of restitution" and denied Blay due process. Read the decision reversing the Honorable Richard S. Sheward a second time in this case in State v. Tina Blay, 2012-Ohio-62.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Contact me 24/7 by sending an email to ohiocriminalappealslawyer@gmail.com

Have you ever heard that expression? Would you hire a painter to do your plumbing? Hire a plumber to do your electrical work? Would you hire a probate lawyer for your criminal trial? Hire a criminal lawyer to do your will? Hire a bankruptcy lawyer to handle your divorce? Hire a lawyer that does probate and bankruptcy and divorce and criminal and anything else that comes through the door for your criminal appeal? Maybe you would, but I would not recommend it.

The law is changing and evolving in the area of criminal law as I imagine it is in other areas of law. Even it if it was not changing, there are many things one needs to know about criminal law to be able to adequately represent a criminal defendant at trial or on appeal. That is why I have limited my practice to criminal defense and especially criminal defense appeals and other post-conviction matters.

If you want to hire a "general practitioner" for your appeal even though they have never done an appeal before, good luck. But if you want to hire me click on the "contact me" page of my blog. And if you decide to go with the jack of all trades, keep me in mind for a possible Appellate Rule 26(B) Application if you lose your appeal. You may be able to have your appeal reopened.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Contact me 24/7 by sending an email to ohiocriminalappealslawyer@gmail.com

Did you lose your appeal in the last 90 days? Don't know what to do? Think your criminal appeal lawyer may have done a bad job? One option you have when you lose an appeal in one of the district courts of appeal in Ohio is to file an application for reopening your appeal pursuant to Ohio Appellate Rule 26(B). Through Rule 26(B) you would raise issues that your appellate counsel failed to raise. The court of appeals will decide whether to reopen your appeal. Maybe your appellate counsel missed a winning issue. Maybe the lawyer who handled your criminal appeal did not get all the transcripts they should have gotten. Maybe, just maybe, the lawyer you hired to do your appeal handed the job to a paralegal, law clerk, or someone else and it was that person that missed an issue that should have been raised in your appeal. A Rule 26(B) application is one option you have when you lose your appeal, but it has to be filed "within ninety days from journalization of the appellate judgment unless the application shows good cause for filing at a later time." Maybe you should have a criminal defense lawyer who has experience in doing criminal appeals in Ohio look over your case.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Contact me 24/7 by sending an email to ohiocriminalappealslawyer@gmail.com

Leveraging may be great for Dayton criminal defense lawyers but bad for you. Leveraging is a way that lawyers can "magnify profits" by delegating work to associates, law clerks or paralegals. Here is just one article on leveraging.

Leveraging may be great for the lawyer, but what does leveraging mean for you? In my experience and from talking to clients who have used popular law firms in the past, leveraging means you think you are paying loads of money for some popular lawyer when it turns out you are paying loads of money for some associate or paralegal to work on your case.

Some popular Dayton firms are so brazen that they will even send associates in to represent you in trial courts. With those firms there is no hiding the fact that the popular lawyer you gave your life savings to when you signed the fee agreement does not make appearances in your case (unless of course yours is a "high profile" case that can land the popular partner on the local news). This seems to happen a lot in the Dayton area, but people seem to put up with it.

Having some associate show up in the trial court is bad enough, but what about appeals? When you hire a popular lawyer for your appeal do you know who will actually do the work? Is the popular partner going to work on your case or will they delegate the work to some associate they hired, another lawyer in town, or a law clerk or paralegal? How will you know? If the popular lawyer delegates the work, do you think they will spend the time shadowing everything the underling does? Will they spend the time to closely read the transcripts, view the exhibits, do the research and write the briefs? That would defeat the purpose of leveraging. And leveraging allows the popular partner to take your money and have someone else do the work. This is okay if you hired the popular firm because you wanted their paralegal to try to get your conviction reversed.

Keep this in mind when you are deciding whether to hire some popular lawyer in an office full of "associates," "assistants," and paralegals. You may actually get what you are paying for if you hire a lawyer like myself who will be "hands on" and who will not use you as leverage to pad their income. When you hire a popular law firm in Dayton, you may be actually paying more for less. Wouldn't you rather pay less for more?

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Contact me 24/7 by sending an email to ohiocriminalappealslawyer@gmail.com

What is the most important criteria when choosing to hire a criminal defense appeal lawyer? I think it would be the lawyer's batting average. Has the lawyer ever won a criminal appeal? How many did they win? What was the nature of the win? Click here for my tips on how to check a lawyer's record on appeal.

Any lawyer can lose appeals and take your money (or take your money and then lose the appeal). Or even worse, any lawyer can take your money and farm the work out to someone else. I have been contacted by family members looking to hire an appeals lawyer for their incarcerated loved one, and sometimes the family hires a lawyer who has never won a criminal appeal. Why is that? Are they hoping that this time will be when this lawyer finally breaks through and gets that win? Or maybe they hired the losing lawyer for some other reason. Or maybe they do not want to win.

If you want to win your appeal, isn't the lawyer's batting average the most important thing? Let's say you were the manager of a baseball team. It is the bottom of the 9th and you really need a hit if you are to win the game. Let's say you have a choice about what batter you could put up to the plate. Are you going to go with the experienced batter who has had many hits? Or are you going to go with the rookie who has never had a hit? The same should apply when hiring a lawyer for your criminal appeal. Click here for my tips on hiring a lawyer for your appeal.

Choosing a lawyer to appeal your conviction or sentence is hard. The yellow pages are full of lawyers. How do you know which one to pick? You could ask a friend who they used on their criminal appeal, but how many of us have friends who had a good lawyer on their criminal appeal? How about a lawyer on television or a billboard? Those are things that can be bought too. Is a lawyer better because they pay more on advertising? Not necessarily so you better be cautious.

So what do you do about hiring a lawyer for your appeal? If you don't have a trusted friend who knows that a certain criminal appeals lawyer will do a good job on the appeal, you will have to do your best with what you have - your common sense. Maybe you should ask the following questions.

1. Does the lawyer limit their practice to certain areas of the law or is the lawyer trying to wear too many hats (and trying to keep up on developments in too many areas)? I have limited my practice to criminal defense appeals since 2003.

2. Is there any way for you to tell that the lawyer is current in the area of criminal law or are you just hoping they are? I keep up on the Federal and Ohio cases every week and I blog about the cases I think you would find most interesting.

3. Who is going to work on your appeal? Will it be the lawyer you meet or will it be staff hired by this person you will never see? Even worse, will the lawyer you meet contract the work out to another lawyer or someone else? I have often heard how a family wanted to hire someone they perceived to be some "Perry Mason" type figure to handle the criminal defense at trial only to find that all they saw during the trial process were Associates hired by this "top dog." On appeal it would be even easier for this Perry Mason figure to have all kinds of law students, paralegals, other lawyers down on their luck or whatever do the work you hired "Perry Mason" to do. How would you ever know? I do all the work -- from start to finish -- on every criminal defense appeal I handle.

4. Watch out for promises. You know when you will find out you hired the wrong lawyer? Probably when it is too late. I have heard stories of how lawyers have promised the moon to potential clients. The defendant and his family are surprised at the end when it all falls flat and the lawyer goes on to the next case, but then what? The lawyer already has his money. "But you promised you would take it all the way to the Supreme Court" or "You promised we would win" or "You promised he would be home for the holidays." Yeah, right. Watch out for the lawyer making promises that sound too good to be true (even though I know you want to believe them at the time). And how do you think one lawyer will get the case instead of another? Is it who makes you more or better promises? Take any promises you do not get in writing with a grain of salt. I will not make any promises and I will be honest about your prospects.

5. Is the lawyer you had at trial pushing a certain lawyer on you for appeal? This may be okay, but it could also be a bad thing. On appeal I try to find ways in which the trial lawyer failed to provide the effective assistance of counsel. Many trial lawyers do not enjoy being accused of being ineffective. If a trial lawyer is pushing a certain lawyer onto you to do the appeal, ask yourself why they are doing this. Are they buddies from law school? Associates? Golf partners? You may be better off choosing a lawyer who only has your interest in mind when examining the record for ineffective assistance of trial counsel.

6. Does the lawyer have a winning track record to show they know how to win an appeal or can't they show you cases they have won on appeal? How many criminal defense appeals have they done? Make sure you get facts from the lawyer and not just claims or promises. Many of my wins are listed on this blog (click on "View my wins on appeal" in the upper right corner). Click here to see how to check a lawyer's record on appeal.

7. What research system will the lawyer use to do the research for your appeal? Will it be a "free" or low-cost system or a premium research system like LexisNexis? I use LexisNexis and so I have access to all the law I would need to handle your appeal.

8. What kind of support network does the lawyer have? As a long-time member of the Ohio Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, I have access to the Listserv which "joins over 500 members from around the state" who bounce ideas off each other and keep up on current developments in the field of criminal defense in Ohio. I am also a long-time member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers which also has a listserv.

Choosing the right professional is always a challenge and choosing a lawyer for your appeal might be the hardest of all. But choose wisely because you may not know how good (or bad) your choice was until it is too late. By the way, if you went with someone else and regret it, check out the information I posted under PRACTICE AREAS about applications to reopen appeals.

Good luck!

It is important for you to know how to check a lawyer's record on appeal before you hire him or her. How many appeals have they handled? How many have they won? How many have they lost? From looking at the opinions of the Court of Appeals, does it look like the lawyer put a lot of work into trying to win the appeals they lost?

You can search for Court of Appeals decisions by a lawyer's name or Supreme Court Number (you should try both ways to make sure you do not miss anything). Let's use Appeal Lawyer Robert Alan Brenner as an example. I practice in the Second District. When you go to the web site (for which there is a link at the end of this paragraph), pick "Second District Court of Appeals" under "Source," pick "Anytime" under "Decided," enter "Brenner" in the "Full text" search area, make sure "Topics/Issues" is checked and click "Submit." You can see every case I handled in the Second District Court of Appeals that made it to a decision. Some of those are not my cases since "Brenner" will pull up some miss-hits, but you get the idea. Check each case by clicking on its link to confirm you found the attorney you were looking for. Here is the link to the web site.

Make sure you check a lawyer's history when you are considering hiring them. Or you could just trust what the lawyer tells you. You know, how great they are, how they can handle your situation, how much experience they have with your kind of case, etc. But if I were you, I'd run a search.

And do not forget that you do not know who is actually doing the appellate work in these cases. Just because a particular lawyer's name is on a decision does not mean they reviewed the transcript and the rest of the record, did the research, or even wrote the brief. Word has it that a popular local firm uses a lawyer outside of Ohio for their appellate work. As I have said elsewhere on this site, I do all the appellate work myself on all the cases I handle. And since I am located in this area, I can go to the clerk's office myself, view the evidence myself, and even visit important landmarks related to the case. Click here for the rest of my tips on picking a lawyer for your criminal appeal.

Many convicted defendants will qualify for an appointed lawyer for their appeal. This article printed in today's Dayton Daily News points out how low appointed fees are and starts out by asking whether you'd want your loved one represented by a low-paid lawyer.

In my experience, fees for appointed counsel on appeal are even lower than those at the trial level and requests for "extraordinary fees" are granted more frequently at the trial level than on appeal. So do you want your loved one represented by an appointed attorney on appeal? Many families have no choice since they simply cannot afford to hire a private lawyer. But if you can afford to hire a private lawyer for the appeal, you may want to do so.

Montgomery County pays $50.00 per hour up to $1500.00 for appeals from felony convictions. That amounts to just 30 hours of work. I was appointed to this appeal in Montgomery County and I spent 48.9 hours on the case. When I do appeals, I put in as much time as it takes to give my clients the best chance to win. I won the appeal and the defendant's prison term was shortened by 10 years. Since I spent 48.9 hours on the appeal, I made just $30.50 an hour, before taxes and expenses. And Montgomery County pays significantly more for appointed appeals than the other counties within the Second District.

If the lawyer appointed to your appeal has the goal of winning your appeal despite the low fees, then you should probably stick with that lawyer. But how many appointed lawyers can win a felony appeal in just 20 or 30 hours? Or how many appointed lawyers will go beyond those fee limits knowing that their hourly fee is shrinking with each extra hour of effort?

If you want to stick with your appointed lawyer on appeal, then good luck to you. I hope one of the good ones was appointed to your case. But just remember how stifling the appointed fees are for appeals in Ohio. If you can afford a private lawyer, you may want to consider retaining one to give yourself the best chance to win on appeal. Here is a link to my tips for choosing a lawyer for your appeal.