appealing agaist crown court

[gold_fish]

My brother has been convicted of section 18 woundering with intent. He is in remand and is awaiting sentencing, however we want to appeal agaist the conviction as he did not comitte the offence and we belive it was a set up. Do we appeal 28 days after he is convicted or is it 28 days after sentencing? Any advice i would be very greatfull for

Thank you

[dh001]

you can give notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) within 28 days of the decision to be appealed. Thus, if you appeal against conviction after your trial, you may have to give notice to the court before you are actually sentenced. The notice must state your grounds of appeal.

Have you discussed this with Counsel for Defence?

[fredpuli47]

Your brother needs 'leave to appeal', the permission of the Court of Appeal, to appeal.That permission is given or refused by a High Court judge who reads the grounds of appeal and application.Nobody appears before him, he reads the papers he has in private and makes his decision.
That's why your brother has to be advised by his barrister. His counsel will say whether there are any grounds for appeal.If counsel thinks there are he writes an opinion giving his reasons, in support of the application and that is read by the High Court judge in deciding whether to give leave or not.

[bednobs]

if further evidence has come to light that wasn't available to the original jury, or something went wrong with the court process, then there is a point in appealing. If not, i don't think he will be granted an appeal -as others have said, let him be guided by the legal team

[fredpuli47]

Don't raise your hopes.Very few cases that counsel do result in counsel thinking there are grounds of appeal.Most of those are appeals against sentence only.Counsel expects to lose about half the trials they do,so there's no shortage of guilty verdicts to think about!
Counsel will be looking for mistakes of law, 'misdirections', in what the judge told the jury in his summing up at the end of the trial. As counsel always takes a careful note of what the directions are, and as he has the opportunity to invite the judge to correct any false impression or apparent misdirection given (rather than risk a guilty verdict as a result), he will know if any misdirection remains and be quick to advise appeal..The other area is the admission of evidence in the trial which should not have been admitted.Counsel will know all about that too, and have an opinion about it and whether it made a difference, because he'll have argued against it in the trial or, if it arises by surprise, moved that the trial be stopped and the jury discharged.

Even if leave is given, there's another obstacle.The Court of Appeal may 'apply the proviso' that is agree with counsel but rule that the jury would have reached the same verdict had the evidence not gone in or the misdirection not been made, because the case was overwhelming and the error not such as to result in injustice.