Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

A Marsden motion is a request to replace the defendant's appointed attorney. I don't believe the procedure is available to defendants who have private counsel, and even if it was there wouldn't be much point in bringing one now.

Hiring a private lawyer probably improved your son's chances, but it did not guarantee a better result than a PD would have gotten him. And the victim's testimony about your son could easily have outweighed the other testimony in the judge's mind, especially if the other witnesses were biased or were unable to see/hear the events as clearly (because they were too far away, for example, or because they were near noisy traffic).

The judgment you describe is appealable, but the time in which to appeal is limited. You haven't said when the judgment was entered, so I don't know how much time, if any, your son still has.

Bear in mind that an appeal is not a new trial. The appellate court will only reverse if it believes there were errors in the conduct of the trial or pretrial proceedings *and* if those errors were sufficiently likely to have affected the outcome. (Note that different types of errors are reviewed according to different standards.) The Court of Appeal may disagree strongly with the judge yet still affirm her ruling if it believes her ruling was authorized by law or if it believes she made a mistake that didn't affect the outcome.

Your son's medical condition probably had nothing to do with his guilt or innocence, but it might have been a very relevant factor at the time of sentencing. The lawyer probably should have raised it. The same may be true of some of the other issues you mention. Ineffective assistance of counsel ("IAC") is one ground on which to challenge a judgment, though it is often hard to do so via an appeal. That's because demonstrating IAC usually requires additional evidence. Appeals are pretty much limited to the evidence that was offered at trial. But additional evidence can be used in a habeas corpus proceeding. It is common to bring a habeas petition and an appeal concurrently.

I have more than fifteen years of appellate experience and am a certified specialist, per the State Bar. Please feel free to contact me if you want to discuss your son's case further.