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Welcome to the American Justice system. In the Feds, you only have 14 days from sentencing to appeal a sentence. It used to be unlimited, but that was clogging
by ROTMetro 3y ago
Welcome to the American Justice system. In the Feds, you only have 14 days from sentencing to appeal a sentence. It used to be unlimited, but that was clogging up the courts because too many convicted people were exercising their constitutional rights, so they took it down to 14 days (or 30 days if you are the Government prosecutors because some animals are more equal than others).
https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-2-4000-time-appeal-or-petition-review-or-certiorari https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-2-4000-time-appeal-or-petition...
A lot of those 14 days get taken up with time in holding cells being moved from the Courthouse to a Federal Detention Center (or contracted local jail), moved from the pretrial holding facility to your final place of incarceration via Diesel Therapy, etc. If you are lucky you will get access to a law library, paper pad maybe an hour a day, but the Supreme Court has rules that is enough to fulfill your constitutional right to 'access to the courts'. You also need to figure out how to get the law library to weight your mail to put correct postage and get the certified mail forms, and to the jail/prison mail room during their 'open house' hours (normally 1-2 hours and at the same time lunch is served so you might not be eating lunch that day if you are at a place with controlled movements) so that you can send legal mail to mail your appeal (and how to come up with stamps to send certified mail to the Court and Prosecutor).
Edit: Getting stamps includes waiting for the once weekly commissary day to order them, and then potentially waiting for commissary to be delivered to your cell (shucks, it's delivered after the mail room open house 1-2 hour window) so that's up to a 9 day loss of time just to get stamps/envelopes after the appeal is written in triplicate (Court, Prosecutor, personal copy) so you can weigh it and know how many stamps you need to purchase.
- avar 3y agoAren't you cherry picking cases where the defendant chose to represent himself? Otherwise wouldn't their legal council handle the timely filing of an appeal?
- webnrrd2k 3y agoSo... people who represent themselves have no right to equal justice? Or just that they should need to clear an absurdly high bar?
- avar 3y agoI'm not saying the American justice system doesn't suck. Just that the GP's story might start with "after explicitly refusing the services of their public defender, who'd normally be tasked with filing the paperwork for an appeal....". It also sucks that people literally starve due to poverty, but if you're starving after explicitly refusing food stamps your story's going to sound very fun different.
- ROTMetro 3y agoSorry for misunderstanding of what access to Constitutional rights mean in the United States. Thanks for clearing that up. 14 days to excursive your rights does seem totally reasonable now that you have clarified. Not all counsel is willing to file an appeal as it tends to upset the local judge the lawyer goes before regularly when they 'go above the judges head' to the appeals court. Not everyone wants to use the same lawyer that just lost to do their appeal. 14 days to get new counsel, get them to understand your case, all while going through the process of being shipped to your final place of incarceration actually is reasonable, what was I thinking? After spending $250,000 on a trial, getting resources together while in prison to try and appeal should totally just take 14 days. (lawyers, funnily, ask for a pretty large chunk up front). Processing a judge's ruling and trying to see if you have grounds for an appeal that has a chance of success is super simple stuff. It's not like the law is complicated nor that lawyers have multiple clients and ongoing other cases. Sorry guys, I was wrong, a 14 day expiration date on Constitutional rights that has been changed from the long standing previous 'unlimited' is actually totally reasonable. Also, the government getting 30 days (because obviously they are less completant and have less resources with only the full weight of the United States Government behind them) is also reasonable. My bad.
- staticman2 3y ago"Not all counsel is willing to file an appeal as it tends to upset the local judge the lawyer goes before regularly when they 'go above the judges head' to the appeals court." So you refer the client to an attorney that specializes in appeals? I don't see this as a real issue.
- ROTMetro 3y agoYou have no issue with American citizens getting 14 days to exercise their right to appeal? What other Constitutional rights (the right to access the courts is a Constitutional right) have expiration dates? You have no issue with American citizens having lessor rights than Federal officials? You think 14 days is fine, then why should the Federal Government be granted 30? If the government felt 30 days was needed, why limit lowly citizens to 14 days? What other rights are you ok if we remove long standing precedent and process protections and reduce access to to a 2 week limit in the name of bureaucratic expediency?
- anigbrowl 3y agoWhile it's often said that 'a person who represents themselves has a fool for a lawyer', one certainly shouldn't be penalized for trying to care of one's own paperwork. Is there a rational reason not to have basic things like a photocopier and mail franking machine available for people using a prison law library? I don't see one.