With the right skills, experience, and tactics, the verdict of a case can be changed by an expert criminal defence lawyer in Perth. Being handed a guilty verdict does not have to be the end of the road if it’s a lower court that sentenced you. You can request a higher court to review and change the lower court’s decision by filing an appeal. Appealing any conviction comprises a different set of rules that are best handled by these experts. The foremost ones offer complete criminal defence services that include appeals to higher courts.

Time to file an appeal

Court rules strictly demand that your notice of appeal must be filed within a very short period, not more than 14 days when appealing in the Magistrates court, and not more than 21 days if you are appealing to a supreme court, from the time you were convicted or sentenced. Timeliness in filing your notice of appeal is quite critical because it can be denied on the grounds of being filed out of time. The notice of appeal varies from the appellate brief that is to be prepared on your behalf by your defence lawyer.

Questions of law

Appellate courts entertain only appeals that raise questions of legal principles or law within the lower court’s verdict. In any appeal, the higher court doesn’t perform a re-hearing of the case’s facts but only concentrates on the legal issues that were raised in the legal brief submitted by your criminal defence lawyer in Perth, WA. As an appeal involves arguments about legal principles, anybody seeking to appeal a case must immediately consult a criminal appellate lawyer for help with his appeal.

Types of appeals

Appeals against conviction: You can appeal your conviction to a higher court on the grounds of the transcripts of all proceedings that occurred in the lower court. Generally, the appellate court doesn’t entertain questions that arise from facts that have been heard or tried in the lower court unless you are able to prove that exceptional circumstances exist for justifying a rehearing. After hearing all of your legal arguments, they appeal court might then go on to substitute the judgment that convicted you with an acquittal, or even ask that the case be returned to the lower court for further hearing.

Appeals against sentence: You could also appeal your sentence of conviction to a higher court by citing grounds like, the lower court committing a mistake in imposing a penalty that’s clearly out of the range of penalties that are prescribed for your kind of offence, or that the lower court’s judge failed to take some factor that might have entitled you to a lesser penalty, into consideration. Since penalties for offences have been fixed by law, a criminal lawyer remains the best person to help you in arguing your appeal against such a sentence.

Appeals are certainly a different ball game in the practice of criminal trials. They demand the skills and expertise of a seasoned criminal defence lawyer in Perth. The foremost professionals are capable of ensuring that you aren’t convicted for any crime that you’re innocent of, or punished beyond set limits.