You Have to File within 10 Days of Conviction
Video Transcribed: Can you appeal a conviction in Tulsa Municipal Court? I’m Tulsa lawyer James Wirth. I’m doing a series of videos related to questions about Tulsa City Court. And this one is, if you are convicted of something, you go to trial, you’re found guilty, get sentenced, can you appeal that? Do you have a right to appeal?
The answer, of course, is yes, you can appeal it. And it’s appealed very much like, almost exactly like an appeal out of the county court if you’re charged in state court, like Tulsa District Court, and the appeal goes pretty much the same way. And that means that it’s appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and you need to file within 10 days of that conviction. It’s a very quick deadline. 10 days you need to file a notice of intent to appeal and a designation of record. And the designation of a record can be a little bit tricky because that requires you to get certain information from the court reporter to make sure that you can get all of the information from the file and from the court reporter into the record.
So they got to sign off on that to get that in as part of the designation of record. And then once you get that there, you need to file with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. And that is the first stage. And there are a lot of deadlines in these appeals, and some of them are jurisdictional and some of them are not. If it’s jurisdictional, that means if you’re just a tiny bit late, you’re done. It’s out of time. The court lost jurisdiction, and doesn’t have the authority to grant you the relief that you want. But other deadlines are not jurisdictional, in which case if you’re a little bit late, you just need to request forgiveness, and perhaps that forgiveness will be given to you and your case can go on. But if you’re dealing with this circumstance, you’re definitely going to want to have an attorney. There are lots of deadlines that are very important and time-sensitive.
And when you’re going to file these things, you don’t necessarily know what roadblocks you’re going to go into that could cause it to take longer than you expect, which could cause you to miss deadlines you don’t need to miss. But that’s the first stage, file definitely within 10 days, with the municipal court, notice of intent to appeal, and designation of record. Then you get those filed, certified copies of that, off to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and then you’ve got 90 days to file your petition in error with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. And then they get the record there and then you’ve got 60 days to file your brief. That’s generally how it goes. But for anything as complicated as this, do not take general information. Get an attorney representing you on it, or get specific advice for your circumstances, because some issues that laymen may think are going to be a good issue for appeal may not be, and other issues that laymen may not think are a big deal could be a big deal.
So what is going to be important on an appeal can be very different than what is important actually in the initial trial, because it’s going to be about showing that your rights were violated in some way, not necessarily that the judge just didn’t believe the right testimony. Those could be difficult to undo. But if you have procedural errors that violated your due process rights, that may be something that could be addressed.
So if you have recently received a conviction in Tulsa Municipal Court, want to know what your rights to appeal are and whether you have a good case and a good chance of getting that overturned on appeal, you’re going to want to meet with a criminal defense attorney in Tulsa privately and confidentially to get advice on that. To meet with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
