Do You Need to Appeal a Federal Criminal Conviction?

The very first thing you should do is file a notice of appeal. You have only 14 days to file a notice of appeal from when sentence is imposed. If you know that you want to appeal, do not wait to hire a lawyer to file the notice of appeal.

There is one exception to this. If you got a particularly good sentence, well below what the government was asking for, you may cause the federal prosecutor to file a cross-appeal if you appeal. If that happens, you could wind up with a harsher sentence after the appeal.

Here's a link to the form you can use from the District of Maryland (note, you'll have to change the Court name if your appeal is in a different court, and you may have to change the name of the appeals court – call the U.S. District Court Clerk's office if you have questions): Notice of Appeal in pdf and Notice of Appeal in Word. If you know that you want to appeal, you should file the notice immediately.

After you've filed the notice of appeal, please contact us; we'd love to talk to you about helping with your federal criminal appeal.

Regardless of the kind of conviction or sentence, an appeal is your last best hope to vindicate your rights.

Federal criminal procedure is a very complicated area of the law. Sometimes, a savvy, determined and experienced criminal defense attorney can find an issue from a trial or plea hearing which can be presented to an appeals court to ask for a second chance at trial or at sentencing.

If you are hiring an attorney to represent you on appeal, you may be better off hiring a different lawyer than the one who did your trial. A new lawyer will look at your case with fresh eyes, and will be able to make an independent judgment about whether your first criminal lawyer’s performance was good enough to protect your constitutional rights at trial. If you have been convicted of a crime and want to file an appeal, call us immediately for a free, no obligation consultation.

The odds of winning on an appeal may not be great. That said, almost every business day I write about someone who won a federal criminal appeal at the Federal Criminal Appeals Blog.

You have only days to file an appeal, and it can make a difference for the rest of your life. Please contact us if you need a federal criminal appeals lawyer.