Say a person was tried and convicted of a crime. The person was a “type” that tends to be looked down on by the community. There are several appeals, but his conviction isn’t overturned.
Does the fact that the conviction withstood appeals point to the evidence being sufficient for conviction in the first place? Or is the sufficiency of the evidence not really the issue of appeals?
The particular case that brings this up was one in which there were shenanigans such as prosecutors withholding evidence, and later evidence coming up that showed the person was likely innocent. But in the case of prisoners who are in prison and who have gone through lengthy appeals processes, does that show that there was substantial good evidence against the prisoner or is the first trial the only trial that really deals with how compelling the evidence was?
In other words, if a person got railroaded in the first trial, will that always be overturned in subsequent appeals?
That’s the basic rule. Typically, a convicted defendant gets what’s called a direct appeal. That means he can challenge whatever errors happened at trial. If his lawyer didn’t object, he’s got to make a much stronger showing, sometimes “preserving” the error for appeal can be complicated. If he loses, sometimes there’s a second direct appeal, sometimes that one is discretionary (the state supreme court might be able to refuse to hear it). Once he’s exhausted direct appeals, he doesn’t get an automatic second whack at the apple. He’s got to show a constitutional violation, for the most part. And he’s got to show that the result of his trial would probably have been different had the violation not occured. This is a vast oversimplification of the process.
So there’s nothing about a prisoner having gone through a whole series of appeals that can be pointed to as proof that the case against the prisoner was a solid one to start with?
Just to expand a bit on this part of the question…
Sufficiency of the evidence can certainly be an issue for appeal. As GFactor discusses, it’s generally an issue that you must “preserve” for appeal at trial. In other words, before you ask an appeals court to decide that there was not legally sufficient evidence to convict you, you generally have to asked the trial court not to convict you because there was insufficient evidence. This is often done as a matter of course by the defense after the close of the prosecution’s case.
But it’s worth noting that we’re talking about legal sufficiency here… was there enough evidence, as a matter of law, for a rational trier of fact to convict? Here you cannot say, “The jury shouldn’t have believed witnesses A and B because they were contradicted by my witnesses C, D, and E, who were more trustworthy and anyway it was three against two.” The jury is entitled to believe or disbelieve any testimony it hears. Only if there was NO admissible evidence adduced to prove an element of the crime, or if the jury’s belief of some key fact was so absurd as to be not credible as a matter of law will the appeals court step in on this basis.
Interestingly enough, a reversal on these grounds may not require a retrial; it may lead to an immediate dismissal of the case. This is because a failure to convict on sufficiency grounds implicates the double jeopardy clause – the first trial didn’t produce enough evidence to legally convict, and jeopardy attached to that trial. This is in contrast to, say, a reversal because the prosecution told the jury that the accused should testify in his own defense and deny the charges if he’s truly innocent. That’s a reversible error, no doubt, but it just means that the trial wasn’t fair, and reversing it still permits the state to re-try the case. But a case that is reversed because of a legal insufficiency of evidence may well run into a double jeopardy problem on retrial.
In every criminal case, the jury (or judge) is required to evaluate the evidence in order to determine whether it establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Insufficiency of the evidence is frequently raised on direct appeal. That said, all of these folks http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/Browse-Profiles.php were convicted under that standard and lost their direct appeals.
If the guy was convicted at trial and lost his direct appeals, it means that there was sufficient evidence to convict him. There may be all sorts of exulpatory evidence that his own lawyer didn’t find out about, or that was kept secret by the authorities. Sometimes that evidence might include proof that key witnesses were unreliable. The jury gets to see the evidence that was presented and has to decide based on that. A conviction and loss of direct appeals simply means that the jury found the evidence that it saw to be sufficient, and the trial judge and appellate courts agreed.
The key question is: when did you know, or when should you have reasonably known, that this exculpatory evidence was withheld?
For example, let’s say as a defense attorney, during trial I discover that the prosecution has interviewed some witnesses that tend to show my guy might be innocent but not disclosed them to me. You can imagine that I might think of the following tactic: “Say nothing. If my guy gets an acquittal, then it’s all good. If he gets convicted, then I can come back with the claim of exculpatory evidence withheld.”
Defendants are not permitted to “game” the system that way. So you have to be able to show not only that the prosecutor withheld the evidence, but that you couldn’t get the evidence yourself through reasonably diligent investigation.
Also, on collateral attack, as GFactor said above, you must show that the result of his trial would probably have been different if the violation had not occured