Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:
Alright. Lawyertalkpodcast.com. Today, we're back with another riveting episode of What's the Appeal? Well, What's the Appeal? Here we talk about all things appellate related, meaning you've been convicted. It wasn't right. It wasn't just. Maybe you're actually innocent. Maybe you're guilty as the day is long, but the trial wasn't fair. Whatever the situation, we talk about the appellate process here.
Steve Palmer [00:00:21]:
I do a ton of appellate work upstairs in my law practice. You can check it out at Palmer Legal Defense. And today, I'm gonna talk about hidden costs because I've had this come up. In fact, just I'm in the middle of it right now. Somebody has hired me to do the appeal, meaning they've just been convicted. We filed what's called a notice of appeal here in Ohio. Most jurisdictions have something similar. And now the next step is, ordering the record, and the record includes the transcript of the trial court proceedings.
Steve Palmer [00:00:49]:
Now people don't always understand how much this can cost. So let's start with the stuff that is pretty much free. The stuff that's free would be the exhibits at trial, motions that were filed at trial. These are already in the record. In other words, they've been filed with the clerk of courts, and those items will just get transferred up to the court of appeals, virtually, sometimes actually physically too. So in the case of, physical exhibits, sometimes actual exhibits will go in the bags, even the police collection bags, stuffed in a box up to court of appeals. But at any rate, I'm talking mostly about the transcript. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I had sticker shock this week.
Steve Palmer [00:01:27]:
I I ordered a transcript, and I've done this many, many times, more times than I can count in my almost thirty years now. So what I do is I call up the court reporter or we submit a filing requesting the court reporter to prepare a transcript. Now there's two different ways generally, two different ways that, things are documented or transcribed. They're at least recorded in this day and age. Everybody has seen either in the movies or in real court the the stenographer upfront. The stenographer sits up there. They have a shorthand. They have a machine that, takes down pretty much everything the lawyers, the judges, and the witnesses say.
Steve Palmer [00:02:02]:
And believe it or not, they can do this almost in real time now. They call you it it was it this emerged in my day where we could get real time transcription, in one county in Ohio. I could look at a screen on my on my trial table and actually see real time there was, they were testing that technology. And a lot of times, I I would order the transcript. So if there's a witness testimony that was important, I would order that transcript so I would have it for the next day in court or for closing arguments in a couple of days. But what I'm talking about the other the other type of transcription is audio. They're in even video. There are some jurisdictions, and it's getting more and more prevalent, where it's just a videotape and an audio recording of what was said, and there's microphones on the very all around the courtroom, and it records.
Steve Palmer [00:02:47]:
So that's great. It's cheap. You don't have to pay somebody to be up there. But when it comes time to actually transcribe the what happened in court, it gets sort of cumbersome and time consuming and maybe even expensive. There was another jurisdiction in Ohio where I had my first misdemeanor trial back in the nineties. I ordered the transcript, and, I got a DVD or a it might not have been a DVD back in those days, but I think it was a DVD. And that's all it was. And if I wanted to have it transcribed, I had to pay for it.
Steve Palmer [00:03:15]:
So the sticker shock I got recently was I had a trial. So or there was a trial. Somebody was convicted. It was about a four or five day trial, maybe at the most. Maybe maybe just four. And I got the estimate from the court reporter. So we send up the request for transcript. I get the estimate back, and it was 9,800 and some dollars.
Steve Palmer [00:03:34]:
And I I actually I I choked. I I thought for sure this was a mistake. I thought maybe 980, and there was a decimal point in the wrong place, so I actually confirmed. And I sent an email to the court reporter. I said, is this true? Is this accurate? And and the court reporter said, yes. It is. I don't know why it was so expensive. But, certainly, that is not something my client can afford to pay.
Steve Palmer [00:03:55]:
This is this sort of turns everything upside down. I got hired privately to do the appeal. In Ohio, we have something called on direct appeal, and it's appeal as of right, meaning you could get a court appointed lawyer to do the appeal for you. You don't get to choose who you get, and there are some great court appointed lawyers who do appellate work, that way. Some people do it because they need the money. Some people do it because they like it, or maybe they do it for the cause, whatever it would be. There's a lot of great lawyers, but you don't get to choose who you hire to do your appeal. And, just like anything else in the world of even on the private side, there's a lot of crappy lawyers who are are doing appellate work, and maybe they they don't have the experience or they don't know what they're doing yet.
Steve Palmer [00:04:32]:
And the same is true on the appointed side. So just because you pay doesn't mean you get a good lawyer, I guess. But at least you get to choose. Now what I have what the dilemma I'm facing here is that I have been privately retained. I've been paid money to do the legal work, and now we have this bill we're facing for $9,000 and change. What I'm my solution is we are asking the court, because my client's serving a lengthy prison sentence and his family is doing their best to scrape together funds to hire me. We're asking the court to pay for the transcript, and that remains to be seen whether that'll actually happen. But if that doesn't happen, then I'm probably out of the case.
Steve Palmer [00:05:09]:
I probably can't do it because the family doesn't have the funds to pay for the transcript and pay for legal services. So things get, just because just because you wanna appeal and you wanna challenge it, these are these are the hidden costs, that we have to factor in. And if this is the trend, if things are getting more expensive like this, it's gonna get passed down, and people are gonna have to come up with huge chunks of money just to get their trial transcribed so they can appeal. And, you know, you I guess the this sort of demands the next question is, do I really need a transcript? Yes. You do. The only way I can actually do good appellate work is to read what happened in court. If I actually had to watch that on video, if I had to watch four days of trial on video and take notes and and time references and everything else, it would be because I think that's the problem here. I think it was recorded, and the cost is in the transcription.
Steve Palmer [00:05:59]:
But if I had to actually do that and watch it and write down the the, the time references and somehow come up with a citing mechanism where I could say, hey, court of appeals. There was an objection. Day three, minute, whatever, second, whatever. I mean, it would be unwieldy. It would be impossible. And the time extra time it would take would certainly eclipse what the cost of transcript would be just to do it in the first place. So not a great answer. Not a great, I I I'm not I I know I'm not espousing any great wisdom on this.
Steve Palmer [00:06:27]:
I'm just pointing out there's some hidden costs here even that I hadn't recognized or realized until just this week. So, look, if you've got an appeal, if you've just been convicted, now's the time. I I harp on this all the time because, delaying, past deadlines can be absolutely fatal to a good remedy even if you have it, in in on the appellate ladder. So check us out, palmerlegaldefense.com. I'm happy to help with your appeal. Can even help, in federal courts, in, in other state courts. We get local counsel to assist. So, give us a shout.
Steve Palmer [00:06:59]:
And if you've got a question here at Lawyer Talk or you want me to cover a a topic here on what's the appeal or any of our other segments, check us out at lawyertalkpodcast.com. Send me a question there. Leave a question in the comments or just leave a comment. I love to read, and I love to engage. Until next time, this is lawyer talk. What's the appeal off the record on the air?