Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Steve Palmer here with Lawyer Talk Q and A. Check us out at lawyertalkpodcast.com. And today, we're gonna hit another episode of the q and a. And q and a, of course, stands for question and answer, but it is question and answer. It is not legal advice. Please don't take this as legal advice. I highly encourage you. If you have a legal problem, go talk to a lawyer in your area, somebody qualified in that practice area, and, get real legal advice.

Steve Palmer [00:00:25]:

I'm just here, covering topics that people find interesting. Today, I'm gonna talk about a question I got up in my office, yesterday, in fact. I have for those who don't know, I'm a real practicing lawyer in Columbus, Ohio. You can check me out at palmerlegaldefense.com. And I do predominantly criminal defense, and I do a ton of criminal appellate work. And this is an appellate question, that somebody asked me or at least a problem somebody posed yesterday. And the caller basically, explained what was going on. Her loved one had been in prison for almost ten years, on some pretty serious crimes.

Steve Palmer [00:01:00]:

Actually, one was a homicide, and there were some other related crimes that went with it. And she was asking, what can be done? You know, what is there a way that the her loved one wanted to appeal, wanted to file something called post conviction, wanted to do something to try to get out early? These are tough questions, and these are tough conundrums because by the time you get the the hotbed time to actually appeal a conviction is right afterwards. And the sooner people call me after their conviction, the better. Some people even call me before they're even sentenced. I get it. Not every that doesn't always happen, and we don't live in a perfect world. But that that would be ideal. Less than ideal is calling me ten years later and saying, can you help? It's not that I can't help.

Steve Palmer [00:01:41]:

It's just that the legal options become very limited. It's very difficult to, to do anything at that point because the law likes finality. This is like law school one zero one. They teach you that we the law loves to have things finished, done, completed, over. And the law does not like to look backwards and try to undo what's already been done. And there's all sorts of reasons for that, but you can you know, it makes perfect sense, I guess. Unless you're sitting in prison for ten years and maybe there's a mistake in your case, maybe you're actually wrongfully convicted, or maybe you just got a sentence that was too long. But that doesn't mean all hope is lost.

Steve Palmer [00:02:16]:

And, what I was dealing with in this question particularly was newly discovered evidence, meaning evidence that was not available at the time of trial. So if the if the conviction is old like this one, ten years old, or even past any of the appellate deadlines, the best in in maybe, I don't wanna say the only, but the the best realistic chance you have of trying to opening it up or try to reopen it and get back in and deal with it is to find something called newly discovered evidence. And in this particular case, the newly discovered evidence was there was an alleged witness or a witness to the alleged crime rather who is now recanting, who said, look. I I said that when I said it because the police promised me something, or I had some other interest in in providing that information at the time. But now I wanna come clean. I lied. I didn't tell the truth. There was more to it, or I didn't tell the whole truth, or maybe I just changed my mind, whatever it is, you know.

Steve Palmer [00:03:10]:

And certainly the police, the prosecutors, the state, they're gonna look at this like, yeah. Right. Likely story. But it is worth investigating, and that's what I do in these situations. I have a private investigator. The first thing I do is I budget for an investigator to go out, and interview the witness. Actually, the first thing he would do is review all the original transcripts, review the discovery, and then go out and interview the witnesses, or the witness who is changing his or her story. And then we can get it on paper.

Steve Palmer [00:03:38]:

From there, we can try to backfill it into some legal mechanism to reopen the case and and get it back into court. In this in Ohio, we would call that a motion for new trial based on newly discovered evidence. And, again, that evidence could not be available at the time of trial. And that's an important distinction because what what everybody says is, well, my lawyer didn't do this. My lawyer didn't present this evidence, but it doesn't mean it wasn't available. So even things that your lawyer didn't do at the time, may not qualify as newly discovered evidence just because they didn't do it. So evidence not available at the time of trial, maybe a new witness has emerged that nobody knew about, that might qualify. Or recantation, that might qualify.

Steve Palmer [00:04:19]:

Or maybe, there's a there's, some other bit of evidence that somebody investigated and found. Another way we often or you can sometimes get in is if we catch the prosecutors hiding evidence. So, you know, lots of prosecutors offices have, sort of these, conviction integrity units, and and they they may go through the drawers and look for evidence and look for documents and see if there's, any problems with convict a certain conviction. And they may find evidence that maybe a prosecutor was less than trustworthy at the time, didn't hand over evidence or exculpatory or helpful evidence that he or she should have or something, along those lines. So, look, it it doesn't mean your chances of success are completely zero. But as I like to say, the air gets thinner and thinner the higher you get on the appellate ladder and the further away you get from your conviction. So that was the question. If you've got a question, if you've got a topic that you want me to cover here on lawyer talk q and a, just go to lawyer talk q and a dot com, submit a question, check us out in the socials, leave us, I love that term, check us out in the socials, leave us a comment.

Steve Palmer [00:05:22]:

I'll I'll do my best to get back to you, either here or in the comments. And if you got a legal problem, of course, I I do this for a living, palmerlegaldefense.com. This is lawyer talk q and a each and every week, at least until now.