Criminal appeals in New York can involve a number of complexities. From legal grounds to procedural requirements, criminal appeals involve a very different set of expectations and challenges from those defendants are likely to have experienced in their initial trials. Whether you had professional legal support during your trial or not, you may wish to discuss your case with an experienced New York criminal appeals lawyer before determining how to proceed. The timeline for filing a Notice of Appeal for criminal appeals in New York is brief – typically no more than 30 days – so get started today. Call the Law Office of Benjamin Greenwald to schedule a consultation with our knowledgeable staff.
What Is the Appeal Process in New York State?
New York has one of the most complex appellate systems in the nation when it comes to determining which court will hear an appeal. That said, the two factors that are likely to prove most important in criminal appeals directly from a trial court (as opposed to second appeals filed after a first has failed) are:
- Which court had original jurisdiction over the initial trial
- Whether the final outcome of the trial applied the death sentence
Most cases not involving the death sentence will need to be appealed to a regional appellate court, but the specific structure of the appellate system varies somewhat by region within the state.
New York State Departments: How They Affect Criminal Appeals in New York
The State of New York divides its judicial processes into four “departments” – essentially geographic regions, each of which may cover several counties, or in the case of the First Department, only two (New York County and the Bronx). According to the NYSUCS, these courts hear appeals from the courts of original jurisdiction in the counties covered by their respective Departments. In civil cases only, they also hear appeals from Appellate Term courts and “County Courts acting as appellate courts.” The complexity of this system makes it exceptionally difficult for many pro se defendants to navigate, a fact which does not remove your right to represent yourself in court but may be a point to consider in determining whether to hire a New York criminal defense attorney to handle your appeal.
First Steps in New York Criminal Appeals: Filing the Notice of Appeal
The New York State Unified Court System (NYSUCS) advises convicted defendants who wish to challenge their unfavorable verdicts to file the initial Notice of Appeal within 30 days of receiving a sentence. If you have an attorney and you plan to continue working with him or her throughout the New York criminal appeals process, then he or she will likely file the Notice of Appeal on your behalf, but clear and timely communication is important to ensure that the attorney knows you wish to appeal and is prepared to build an appellate case. Defendants sometimes expect that because their criminal defense attorney has already gone through a trial with them, their preparation for an appeal will be minimal. In fact, however, appeal courts will be reviewing some aspect of the trial itself, rather than re-evaluating the evidence in the case. The rules for appeals cases therefore differ substantially from those that apply to criminal cases at initial trial, and the types of issues an attorney will need to address during preparation are very different from the work he or she may have done on your case already.
Procedures in New York Criminal Appeals: Criminal Leave Applications
In New York, the only criminal cases that have an appeal “as of right” to the New York Court of Appeals are those involving the death penalty. The restricted scope of appeals “as of right” does not mean that the defendant has no right to an appeal; rather, it means that the defendant (or the defendant’s attorney) must proceed by filing what is known as a Criminal Leave Application, in accordance with the Court of Appeals Rules of Practice § 500.20. The Criminal Leave Application should be filed with the appellate court indicated by the framework set out in NYCL § 450.60 as soon as is practicable after filing the Notice of Appeal.
Can You Appeal a Criminal Conviction in New York?
Defendants convicted in criminal trials generally have the right to appeal the verdicts handed down in their cases. Even if a defendant does not appeal a guilty verdict, he or she may still decide to appeal the sentence ordered in the case. In fact, the claim that a sentence is unduly harsh is one of the more commonly used grounds for appeal throughout New York State.
What Are the Grounds for Appeal in New York?
If you are not yet familiar with New York criminal appeals, you may not have heard the term “grounds for appeal” before – or you may have encountered the term, but lacked the context to develop a clear understanding of what it meant. “Grounds” are the legal justification for making a request of a court. Grounds are necessary for all kinds of cases, not just criminal appeals; for instance, spouses seeking divorce in many states cite some version of “irreconcilable differences” as their grounds for divorce (the precise terminology used does vary from state to state). Each jurisdiction sets its own rules for what will constitute legal justification for filing a specific type of request to a particular category of court in that jurisdiction.
Legal Basis vs. Personal Motivation
The explanations of grounds for criminal appeals you may easily find online tend to frame “grounds” as the reasons for filing a request with the court. There is some validity to this framing, but it can often lead people contemplating their legal options for pursuing criminal appeals to focus on the reasons why they want an appellate court to overturn a judgement against them. You may have any number of reasons for wanting a conviction removed in your criminal case, including that you are unhappy with the idea of serving a criminal sentence, but a defendant’s reasons for wanting a conviction to go away are not necessarily valid legal grounds for filing an appeal under New York law.
You may find it helpful to think of grounds less as your reason for filing the appeal and more as the reason why the court should grant your request – the claim you make that, if substantiated, will mean that the appeals court is legally obligated to rule in your favor. An outcome in an appellant’s favor can take several shapes, as there are multiple possible ways for an appellate court to handle an appeal when the court agrees that the appellant (the party appealing the case) has met the burden to demonstrate that there was indeed an error at the trial court level. The specific remedies an appellate court may apply will often depend partly on the type and extent of the error at trial, and on what the consequences proceeding from the error may have been.
Grounds for Criminal Appeals in New York: The Importance of the Trial Record
Generally speaking, the grounds for appeal in criminal cases will be based on some type of error that could not be addressed at trial, or an error that was addressed but not rectified, while the original trial proceedings were still underway. The expectation is that both defendants and state prosecutors will make every reasonable effort to resolve issues that arise during trial with the judge in the trial court, while the trial itself is still in progress. This is one reason why the trial record can play such a crucial role in the criminal appeals process: The trial record shows not only what issues arose during the trial, but also how each side attempted to address and resolve them.
For some types of cases, the only issues that can be claimed as grounds for appeal are ones which the party appealing the case tried to address while the trial was ongoing or which, by their nature, could not be addressed at that time (this second category tends to consist primarily of final orders entered in a case). In New York criminal trials, there are two basic grounds for appeal that are generally accepted to be issues a defendant cannot satisfactorily address at trial:
- Prosecutorial misconduct discovered after the fact
- Sentencing errors
When the error itself did not occur until the end of a trial, or did not become known until after a trial was over, then the burden to show evidence from the trial record of an attempt to address it is obviously lifted. Evidence of the error or misconduct, however, must still be substantial and persuasive.
Prosecutorial Misconduct and Grounds for Criminal Appeals in New York: What To Know
If prosecutorial misconduct comes to light during trial proceedings, then the judge presiding over the case may declare a mistrial. In this instance no appeal is needed, although defendants may not necessarily consider a mistrial reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as it often means starting over with a new trial preparation process. If prosecutorial misconduct does not come to light until after the fact, then it may be too late for a mistrial and the defendant may have grounds for an appeal.
Prosecutorial misconduct can come in a few different forms, but Brady rule violations are among those most commonly cited as reasons for criminal appeals in New York. The Brady rule provides important protections to defendants precisely because of the responsibility it places on prosecutors. When New York prosecutors fall short in those responsibilities, defendants may have recourse to appeals to protect their legal rights.
What Is the Brady Rule and What Does It Mean for Criminal Appeals in New York?
The so-called “Brady rule” is named for the 1963 Supreme Court case that established, as a matter of case law, that prosecutors in criminal cases had an obligation to disclose to the defense the existence of potentially exculpatory information in the prosecution’s possession. The rule has been applied nationwide in the decades since, although not all state courts have interpreted and applied the precedent in exactly the same way.
Case Law vs. Statutory Law and Constitutional Law: How the Brady Rule Continues To Inform Criminal Appeals
Case law consists of court decisions that set legal precedents for the interpretation of constitutional and statutory law. This complex interplay is very much on display in the way that the Brady rule continues to influence prosecutorial choices, defendants’ legal grounds for appealing judgments, and the ways appellate courts interpret and apply the precedent set by the decision the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued in Brady v. Maryland.
Particularly at the level of criminal appeals, judicial interpretation in the intermediate courts can have an enormous impact on whether specific prosecutorial misconduct is deemed to have violated the Brady rule and what, as a consequence, the appeals court will decide to do with respect to the judgment entered by the trial court. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) noted some of the potentially prejudicial issues with these variations in their 2013 commentary on Congressional efforts to codify the Brady rule from case law into federal statutory law (with the intention of further clarifying prosecutors’ obligations under federal law and standardizing expectations). As of 2025, national efforts to codify Brady into law have not met with success – but New York State has passed legislation establishing protections in line with Brady under As of 2025, however, national efforts to codify Brady into law have not met with success. , also known as the state’s “automatic discovery” law, which mandates broad disclosures from prosecution to defense, without the need for a specific query.
Following the Brady Rule
Eliminating the expectation of a specific request from the defense is important because, as the Legal Information Institute (LII) maintained by Cornell Law School explains, in the first period after the 1963 SCOTUS decision established the Brady rule it was generally understood to apply only when the defense requested specific information during pretrial discovery, and the prosecution inappropriately denied the request. The Brady rule required the prosecution to instead provide the requested information.
More than 20 years after Brady, in its 1985 ruling in United States v. Bagley, outlined by legal resource nonprofit Oyez, SCOTUS held that prosecutors are constitutionally obligated to disclose to the defense any material information in their possession that would likely be favorable to the defense at trial. The decision also established that withholding such information could constitute a violation of the Brady rule and therefore constitutional obligation even if the withholding happened unintentionally. In combination with the parameters set by NYCPL § 245.20, state statutory law and federal case law provide a robust framework for defendants to bring challenges on the basis of potentially favorable evidence not disclosed by the prosecution during the preparations for trial.
Grounds for Criminal Appeals in New York: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
Another grounds for appealing a criminal case in New York is the claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. Individuals contemplating their options for criminal appeals may be interested to know that this particular basis for criminal appeals tends to be more achievable in New York than in some other jurisdictions, owing to a fine yet significant distinction between state and federal case law on the topic.
Ineffective Assistance of Counsel: Differences Between New York vs. Federal Standards
Both New York’s state constitution and federal law guarantee individuals charged with crimes the right to legal representation. As some legal scholars have noted, however, federal courts and those of New York have not always applied the same criteria in assessing whether that right has been satisfied in a particular case.
To prevail in an appeal filed on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel, defendants in federal courts will generally need to show that their legal representation fell below professional standards and also that the outcome of the trial would likely have been different, had the inadequacy been corrected in time. New York courts are generally understood to apply a standard more favorable to defendants filing criminal appeals, as they have considered appellants to have met the requirements for “ineffective assistance of counsel” if they can show that their attorney or attorneys did not provide “meaningful” representation.
Motion To Vacate Judgment
To initiate criminal appeals in New York on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, typically the convicted defendant will need to file (or have an attorney file) a Motion to Vacate Judgment pursuant to NYCPL § 440.10. For obvious reasons, it is not usual for the same lawyer who represented an individual in his or her initial trial to provide legal support and counsel during this filing and any subsequent appeals process that may follow when ineffective assistance of counsel is the legal grounds claimed for appeal, so be prepared to seek a new attorney if you choose to pursue this particular course.
Criminal Appeals in New York: The Role of Jury Instructions in Case Outcomes
Because many of the most common reasons for criminal appeals in New York are based in potential missteps in how the original trial was conducted – the evidence that was admitted or ruled inadmissible, the lines of witness testimony that were permitted or denied, and so on – and because judges bear primary responsibility for how trials are conducted in their courtrooms, it is very common for criminal appeals to cite as their grounds some decision or action taken by the judge overseeing the case during the course of the proceedings. The instructions given to jurors are a notable example of this type of potential error that could lead to a New York criminal appeal.
How Jurors Are Selected and Why That Matters
Jurors are ordinary citizens, usually with no special knowledge of the law or legal proceedings – in fact, it is not unusual for individuals with substantial experience in law-adjacent fields who are called up for jury duty to be sent home without serving because of concerns, from one party or both, that their previous exposures to legal processes might unduly color their perceptions as the case progresses. The jury is, under the terms of the United States Constitution, supposed to be composed of the defendant’s peers, which usually means selecting 12 eligible individuals at random (jury duty is typically assigned by lot). Ideally these individuals are meant to constitute a broad cross-section of society in which no single person has a clear reason for prejudice with respect to the case on which they will serve.
This explicitly egalitarian and non-specialist aspect of jury selection helps ensure a level “playing field” in court, advantaging neither side during arguments; it also serves as a safeguard of sorts, helping to make sure that defendants are judged by members of the communities in which they live, in accordance with the norms and expectations for reasonable or moral behavior in those areas. However, it also gives rise to a set of conditions under which jurors cannot be expected to know in advance the details of the laws they will be asked to apply in reaching their judgments, and many are not familiar, prior to their service, with the formal standards of evidence applied in criminal vs. civil cases, or the rules by which the evidence presented in court must be assessed.
How Are Jury Instructions Given in Criminal Trials?
Jury instructions function as the answer to all of these gaps. In addition to the fact that they fill in specific legal knowledge individual jurors might never have had occasion to encounter before they were selected for the jury pool, jury instructions help to ensure uniformity in how each side’s arguments are assessed, what factors are considered, and how these factors are weighed. Jury instructions are delivered to all jurors at once, so that all jurors receive exactly the same instructions in exactly the same way at exactly the same times.
What Do Jury Instructions Cover?
Judges are responsible for instructing jurors as needed throughout a trial, but there are two key moments in any trial at which instructions are given as a matter of course:
- At the beginning of the trial, prior to opening arguments, to part of jurors’ preparation for fulfilling their duties
- Near the end of a trial, after closing arguments and prior to deliberations, to establish the parameters jurors must apply in weighing evidence and the factors they must – and, sometimes, must not – consider in reaching a verdict
Issuing clear and effective instructions to the members of a jury is an essential part of a trial judge’s responsibility, and can be crucial to securing a fair verdict in any case.
When Are Jury Instructions Grounds for Criminal Appeals in New York?
The instructions the judge issues to a jury in a criminal trial may be grounds for an appeal whenever those instructions diverge from the prevailing legal standard in a way that makes it probable that the jury might have reached a different verdict, had the judge’s instructions followed the established expectations. Sometimes the case for criminal appeals based on flawed jury instructions can be more clear-cut than others; some laws delineate statutory guidelines explicitly directing judges to instruct juries on particular factors they must consider. In other instances, the law may enumerate a series of factors that the “finders of fact” – judges or juries responsible for reaching judgments in cases to which the law may apply – must consider in determining whether a defendant’s conduct did or did not meet the criteria for a specific violation. Jury instructions that fail to cover these essentials may be considered departures from the legal standard that might reasonably alter the verdict in a case.
In other instances, where the factors to be considered are less explicit in the statutes, there may be more room for interpretation regarding whether a judge’s instructions were appropriate to the case or could have prejudiced judgment against the defendant. Appeals courts generally apply a principle known as judicial deference, so the party appealing a verdict on the basis of judicial error in jury instructions has a significant burden to show that the jury instructions given in their case constituted an error of law, and that the verdict returned by the jury should be considered invalid as a result of that error.
Discuss Criminal Appeals in New York With an Experienced New York Criminal Defense Lawyer
The process of appealing the verdict in a criminal trial can introduce complexities and challenges beyond those encountered in the trial itself. While you may be familiar with the evidence presented by both sides in your case, this evidence will not be the focus of an appeals court. Instead, criminal appeals in New York must establish their legal grounds based on potential errors in how the original trial was carried out, and an appellant must substantiate the errors they have claimed as grounds for appeal in order to have their verdicts vacated or sentences revoked. For all of these reasons, individuals considering criminal appeals in New York State may want to work with a defense lawyer experienced in presenting arguments before the state’s appellate courts. Contact the Law Office of Benjamin Greenwald today to schedule a consultation so that we can discuss the particulars of your case and review your grounds for appeal. Call (845) 567-4820 to coordinate with a member of our staff.
