Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Steve Palmer here, lawyer talk. Taking the what seems like the most boring, mundane, milquetoast topic of criminal appeals and making it interesting, I promise. What's the appeal? Check us out. There's a whole series on what's the appeal? Why am I doing what's the appeal? Because I do a lot of appellate work in my legal practice upstairs. Palmer Legal Defense. Check it out. We do appellate and post conviction stuff in Ohio and federally everywhere. In fact, working on a state case out in Virginia.

Steve Palmer [00:00:27]:

Even so we can go anywhere. Just check us out. Today I'm going to talk about cross appeals. What's a cross appeal? It doesn't mean it's a mean appeal like cross cross, but it comes up every now and then in the context of doing a criminal appeal. And I just happen to be at a crossroads here, not to use cross twice. At a juncture here where I'm going to have to consider filing a cross appeal. Here's how this happens. We won.

Steve Palmer [00:00:57]:

Get the horses out, do the victory lap. We won. So we had an appeal. We first got the case reversed. We had a hearing down in trial court level on a post conviction petition. The Judge issued a 34 page or 44 page opinion granting our petition, giving us a new trial on like three of the four grounds or maybe two and a half of the four grounds that we raised. So we raised different issues, legal issues, and the judge agreed with about two thirds of them. All right, well that's great.

Steve Palmer [00:01:32]:

So if we just have our. That's good enough for me. A win's a win's a win's a win. So we go to trial down in the trial court level and hopefully win the case. Our client walks away and free forever. But there's a fly in the ointment, a gum in the works, whatever metaphor you want to use. The government, the state of Ohio, is going to appeal the judge's decision. Can't they just let us have our win? Apparently not.

Steve Palmer [00:01:57]:

So they're going to appeal the government's decision. So they're going to say. Or the judge's decision. They're going to say, look, we're going to file a notice of appeal. We don't agree. We think the judge got it wrong. And you should not have given this gentleman a new trial. For whatever reasons that you're going to try to come up with, all will be wrong.

Steve Palmer [00:02:10]:

But for whatever reasons they want to come up with, they're going to, they're going to try to appeal the judge's decision. Now, I am at this crossroads the government appeals the judge's decision on the three or two or three grounds that the judge granted. I then can cross appeal and say, look, we agree with the judge on most of this, but on these other two grounds, we don't agree. We think the judge should have ruled in our favor on all these things. Now, why would I do that? Look, a wins, a wins, a wins a win. I just said so, after all. But I have to do that. I think if we're going to preserve our record on appeal going up beyond the Court of Appeals.

Steve Palmer [00:02:53]:

So, you know, I'm playing chess here. We've got all the pieces here and the board is arrayed in a certain way and the queen's over there and the knight's over there and a bit. So I've got to look at the board and I got to think like four moves ahead. And if I lose this appeal, if the if for some reason the court of appeals decides against me and reverses the judge's decision granting my new trial, then the next step up is going to be the Ohio Supreme Court. And if I haven't raised issues, all the issues on behalf of my client, I risk waiving them or not being able to raise them later. It seems weird to appeal a win on my side, a cross appeal, but I didn't win everything. Now I have to decide, do I appeal the issues that I didn't win in order to preserve them for the record? If my client doesn't win the direct appeal, and the answer is probably yes, and the answer is I probably will. But these are the nuances of the appellate process.

Steve Palmer [00:03:52]:

Now, is that interesting to you? I don't know, but it's interesting to me on some level. If you've got a criminal appeal, if you're looking at something either mundane and regular or something more complex like what I'm dealing with, get an experienced appellate lawyers. All too often you get folks who are good lawyers in the normal world, but in the appellate world, it gets complicated. The air gets awful thin and it gets hard to keep up on all the things that can happen. So I'd be happy to help you. By the way, check us out palmerlegaldefense.com or if you've got an appellate question, a topic you want us to cover, maybe it's a famous case. I've done a few of those. Check us out LawyerTalkPodcast.com either way, we're coming at you each and every week off the record, on the air.