Basics of Military Appeal Process
Convictions in the military for sexual assault ordinarily permit for an automatic appeal. That appeal covers any number of grounds from legal issues that occurred in the case to the factual determination of guilt. As long as the sentence was of a certain severity, you will be entitled to an automatic appeal.
When the appellate courts review your appeal, the first question they are going to ask is whether the jury had enough evidence to find the individual guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. At Golden Law, we have experienced tremendous success having the appellate court overturn a conviction because there wasn’t enough evidence to have found a person guilty, even though the jury found them guilty. In those circumstances, that person has been found essentially not guilty at this point, and they walk free. That is the power that the military appeals courts have, which civilian courts don’t have.
Beyond that, military appeals courts act just as civilian appellate courts do, and they review all of the legal rulings that took place throughout the case. This includes whether the judge allowed evidence that they shouldn’t have, or prohibited evidence that you should have been able to present to the jury. In either case, we can dig deep and see what the judge’s behavior was throughout the legal rulings and the way in which the case was handled to determine whether it was appropriate.
There are a number of other ways to attack the case, like questioning whether the command had too much influence over the case, whether the prosecutors behaved appropriately, or whether they committed some degree of prosecutorial misconduct. Was there some sort of evidence that came to light after the trial, which should have been considered? If so, there should be a new trial. There are all sorts of grounds for a military appeal after a conviction in a sexual assault case.
How is a Court-Martial Appealed?
The outcome of a case in the military can be appealed through the military appeals courts. If you had a case that occurred in a civilian setting, then that would have to be handled through civilian appeals courts. Often, we have people who started in a civilian criminal system and then the case got transferred over to the military system, or they were prosecuted on similar charges in both the civilian case and the military case. If there is any sort of a conviction in a military courtroom, the military appeals courts will be the appropriate appeal court.
Are There Any Sex Crime Convictions That Can’t Ever Be Appealed?
In the military, all convictions can be appealed, regardless of the type of conviction. There are certain cases ending with very low sentence or no sentence at all that do not provide an automatic right to appeal, but you still have the right to petition for an appeal. Often, in those cases, what we see is that the jury found the person guilty because they thought they had to but they didn’t give him a particularly harsh sentence, because they were still in doubt as to whether the crime actually happened. The frustrating thing about those cases is that you might not get an automatic appeal, and the free military counsel might not be willing to help you because you don’t have that automatic appeal.
In most military sex crimes cases, if there is a conviction, there is going to be an automatic sentence which is severe enough to mandate an automatic appeal. That’s when you need to get an appellate attorney who has exceptional experience on appeal because it is a very small industry. You need someone who knows the process inside and out.
