Legal Question in Criminal Law in Texas

I think you can probably do better than $10,000, but I doubt you're going to be able to find anyone competent to do it for less than maybe $4000-$5000. You would also be responsible for paying the court reporter's fees for producing the record, which for a long trial can end up being expensive. Actually, if the trial took several days and the court reporter's fees were included in the $10,000 they quoted you, that might not be that bad a price after all, because the reporter's fees could very well be several thousand all by themselves. The attorney does not have any control at all over what the reporter charges, and they do have to pass that cost along to you, so they may have already found out what the reporter's fee will be and done a package price--it's at least worth asking.

The reality is that paying for it yourself does not guarantee a good job, though. An attorney may be great in the courtroom, but have real difficulty writing a brief--it requires an entirely different set of skills. Ask to see a recent appellate brief written by the attorney before you sign up so that you can at least see for yourself whether the attorney can write coherently. I did appeals for the State for eight years, and you would not believe how bad some of the briefs I read were, from retained counsel as well as appointed. Some were so poorly written that I literally could not understand what the issue was well enough to feel comfortable putting the usual one response for each issue. Those usually ended up with me having to say something like, "If the Appellant's argument is that the court's admission of this testimony constitutes reversible error, any such possible error was clearly not preserved for review, as Appellant's trial attorney never once voiced an objection. Alternatively, it also seems possible that the Appellant is trying to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, in which case he has wholly failed to provide either the applicable standard of review or the factual analysis that would be appropriate for such a claim" (aka "I don't have a clue what this guy's trying to say, but it's wrong any way you look at it). Even though you may not understand the legal doctrines involved, if the attorney's writing skills are any good, you should be able to follow along with what they're saying and get from "A" to "B" to "C" without getting too lost. If you can't at at least more or less do that, odds are the appellate justices won't be able to, either.

In any case, if you can pay the $4000 or more for a retained attorney, great, but there's no reason that your son can't still ask for a court-appointed attorney on appeal, even if you paid for his attorney at the trial level. Your financial situation doesn't matter--he's an adult, and it's HIS ability to pay for his own attorney that would be considered by the court. Realistically, unless he's got a large savings account, trust fund, or Maserati he could sell, he very probably does qualify (it's pretty obvious he can't be expected to work to pay for it now). True, it's luck of the draw, and some court-appointed appellate attorneys are not great, but most aren't that bad, and some are definitely better than what you might end up with hiring your own.

A couple of last thoughts, neither of which I imagine you'll want to hear, but just so you'll know:

1) Be aware that whatever may be appealable on the robbery conviction, there are many fewer possibilities for appealing the probation revocation on the burglary, which will almost certainly be coming within a matter of weeks. The State has a much lower burden of proof there (they just need to prove that he probably violated some term--ANY term--of his probation, and they could do that even without the new charges, just based on him going on the run.

2) Just appealing the length of the sentence in either case isn't really much of a possibility. Realistically, if the sentence for either case is within the punishment range, he would not get anywhere appealing solely based on the length of the sentence. I'm sorry you're in this position, and I hope you can try to take care of yourself as well as your son, and find support from the people in your life to get through this. Good luck.