Legal Question in Appeals and Writs in California

Re: Is it possible to get a case appealed or reversed?

It may be possible to change his plea for good cause if you act quickly, Call me directly at 16192223504.

Re: Is it possible to get a case appealed or reversed?

I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "In order to avoid a lengthy trial . . . he went ahead and took the ruling." If there was no trial then there was no "ruling" he could accept in lieu of trial. Perhaps you are referring to a ruling about the admissibility of evidence or some other pre-trial matter.

Or you might mean that he pled guilty. A defendant's guilty plea severely limits his ability to appeal. He can ask the judge to issue a certificate of probable cause (CPC) which would authorize him to appeal an issue which his plea would otherwise have waived, but without more facts I can't say what issues he might have or how likely it is that he would get a CPC.

Without a CPC, a defendant who has pled guilty can make only three types of arguments on appeal. First, he can argue that he was not adequately informed of the consequences of his plea and/or that the trial court did not adequately determine that the plea had a sufficient basis in fact. In most guilty plea cases the prosecutor will have the defendant sign documents addressing these issues; these documents will become part of the record and will make this kind of argument hard to make. Another common procedure is for the judge to explain these matters to the defendant on the record in open court and ask if he understands them. If the defendant says yes, he will again have a hard time winning this type of argument. His case will be harder still if both of these procedures occur. Still, judges and prosecutors sometimes make mistakes and when this happens such appeals can succeed.

The second kind of appeal that can follow a guilty plea in the absence of a CPC is one which says the court mistakenly denied a pre-trial motion to exclude evidence. Such a ruling can make a guilty verdict almost certain, and it would be wasteful to make defendants in this position go through trial before they could contest it. It is often hard to say whether a particular piece of evidence should be admitted, and judges sometimes make mistakes even when the answer isn't so difficult. I recently won an appeal based upon this type of error, and there have been many other successful appeals from such rulings.

The third type of appeal available to a defendant who pled guilty but has no CPC is one based upon events that happened after the plea. Usually these appeals argue that the defendant's sentence was improper, but there are sometimes other post-plea errors that need to be appealed.

Whatever your brother's circumstances may be, you need to remember that he has a strict deadline by which to file his notice of appeal. If he needs a CPC, he needs to ask for it early enough for the judge to have time to review the request and (hopefully) issue the certificate so that it can be attached to the notice.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you want to discuss your brother's case further.