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A focused Louisiana appeals attorney brings a different skill set than the lawyer who tried your case.
By reading the full trial transcript with fresh eyes, an appellate lawyer can spot reversible errors in jury instructions, prosecutorial conduct, constitutional rulings, and sentencing that trial counsel may have missed or failed to preserve for review.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this content does not create an attorney-client relationship. Laws vary by state and change frequently — information that applies in one jurisdiction may not apply in another. Consult a licensed attorney in your state for advice specific to your situation.
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After a conviction, most people describe the same feeling. The verdict comes in, the courtroom empties, and the next steps are unclear. The trial is over, but the questions are not. What can still be done? Who reviews what happened? Whether anything was missed.
Trial work and appellate work are two distinct disciplines. A trial attorney operates in real time. The job is reading the room, examining witnesses, responding to rulings as they come, and making hard calls under pressure with no second draft.
An appellate attorney works in the opposite mode. The trial is finished. The record is closed. The work is retrospective, written, and built on careful reading rather than spoken argument.
An appellate lawyer sits with thousands of pages of transcripts and reads slowly. Every ruling, objection, and jury instruction. The goal is not to relive the trial. The goal is to identify the places where the law was applied incorrectly and to translate those moments into legal arguments that a panel of judges will read on paper.
Neither role is better than the other. They are different specialties, and good appellate counsel is hard to find. It is even harder to find someone like Chad Ikerd who is both an experienced trial attorney and appellate counsel.
A trial lawyer focused on winning at trial is not in a position to simultaneously catalog every possible appellate issue while cross-examining a witness. That is not a criticism. It is the reason appellate specialization exists.
This is also why bringing in a dedicated appellate lawyer before or after conviction can meaningfully change the outcome. If you are searching for a criminal defense attorney in Lafayette who understands the appellate side, that distinction matters at every step.
The trial transcript is the complete written record of your trial. It captures every ruling, every objection, every witness statement, and every argument made in front of the jury.
To a non-lawyer, it reads like a long script. To an appellate attorney, it reads like a legal document with potential errors hidden in plain sight.
The reading is slow on purpose. An appellate lawyer is not reliving the trial. They are searching for the moments where the law was applied incorrectly.
That can mean a misstated element of a crime in the jury charge, a ruling on evidence that should have gone the other way, a sentence that exceeds what the statute allows, or a closing argument that crossed a line.
Specifically, an appellate attorney looks for four kinds of problems that come up most often in Louisiana criminal appeals. The next section walks through each one. The point of transcript review is to find where these problems appear in your case and to determine whether they were preserved.
That last word matters. The transcript shows what was objected to and what was not, because under Louisiana law, only “preserved” issues that were objected to can be raised on appeal.
The Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure art. 841 states that “an irregularity or error cannot be availed of after verdict unless it was objected to at the time of occurrence.” This is called the “contemporaneous objection rule.” A skilled appellate reader knows how to identify both the errors that were preserved and the narrow category that can be reviewed even without an objection.
Jury instructions are the judge’s explanation of the law to the jury before deliberation begins. They tell the jury what the elements of the crime are, what the State has to prove, and what legal standards apply.
When those instructions misstate the law, the verdict may rest on a flawed legal foundation.
La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 802 requires that the court charge the jury “as to the law applicable to the case,” instruct the jury that it must accept the law as given by the court, and clarify that the jury alone determines the weight and credibility of the evidence. When an instruction strays from the actual law of the case, that may be reversible.
The reversibility test in Louisiana follows the Sullivan/Johnson standard. An appellate court asks whether “the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial is surely unattributable to the error.” That standard comes from State v. Johnson, 94-1379 (La. 11/27/95); 664 So. 2d 94, applying Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275 (1993) and Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967) (establishing the harmless-error test for jury instruction errors).
A recent example is State v. Coutee, 2023-K-01549 (La. 06/27/25); 413 So. 3d 408, where the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed a second-degree murder conviction because the trial court gave an aggressor-doctrine instruction in a stand-your-ground case with no evidentiary foundation for it.
The court found the instruction reintroduced a duty to retreat and undermined the statutory presumption. The verdict could not stand on that instruction.
In plain language: if the jury was told the wrong legal rule, the verdict may rest on a legal mistake rather than on the facts.
Prosecutors have a constitutional duty to disclose evidence that is favorable to the defense. That duty comes from Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). The Supreme Court held that “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”
In Louisiana, discovery violations are also governed by La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 729.5, which authorizes a range of sanctions when a party fails to comply with discovery obligations. The constitutional duty under Brady, however, exists independently of any statutory rule and does not require a defense request.
Louisiana courts apply a three-part test to Brady claims, as set out in State v. Cousin, 710 So. 2d 1065 (La. 1998).
The evidence must be favorable to the accused, either because it is exculpatory or because it impeaches a State witness. The evidence must have been suppressed by the State, whether willfully or inadvertently. And the evidence must be material, meaning there is a reasonable probability that disclosure would have changed the result of the proceeding.
A conviction is reversed for improper closing argument only when the court is “firmly convinced that the jury was influenced by the remarks and that they contributed to the verdict.” The standard is strict, and not every inflammatory remark meets it.
In plain language: prosecutors carry legal obligations. When those obligations are not met, the conviction may not stand.
Constitutional rulings come up throughout a trial. A motion to suppress evidence under the Fourth Amendment because of an unlawful search or seizure.
A ruling on whether evidence the defendant needs for the defense can be admitted. A decision touching the right to counsel, the right to confront witnesses, or the right to remain silent.
When those rulings are made incorrectly, the verdict may be built on evidence that should never have been heard or on the absence of evidence that should have been heard.
Most of these errors, however, must have been objected to at trial to be reviewed on appeal. The next section explains why that distinction matters and what exceptions exist.
Louisiana’s constitution protects against “cruel, excessive, or unusual punishment.” La. Const. art. I, § 20 reads in full: “No law shall subject any person to euthanasia, to torture, or to cruel, excessive, or unusual punishment.” That word “excessive” is not in the federal Eighth Amendment, and Louisiana courts have read it as giving broader protection.
The test for an excessive sentence comes from State v. Dorthey, 623 So. 2d 1276 (La. 1993) and State v. Johnson, 709 So. 2d 672 (La. 1998). A sentence is constitutionally excessive if it is “grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime or is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering.”
To raise a statutory excessive sentence claim on appeal, a motion to reconsider sentence must be filed first. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 881.1 governs that motion, and La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 881.2 governs appellate review of the sentence. Under art. 881.1(C), failure to file the motion or to include a specific ground for it precludes claims of a statutorily excessive sentence from being raised on appeal. If the motion is not filed, the excessive sentence claim is waived.
Under Louisiana law, you generally have 30 days from sentencing to file a motion to reconsider sentence under La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 881.1. Deadlines vary based on your specific circumstances. Consult an attorney immediately to protect your rights.
Louisiana law has a strict rule about when a trial error can be raised on appeal. If your trial attorney did not object at the moment a legal mistake happened, the error is generally treated as waived. That rule is called the “contemporaneous objection rule,” and it is found in La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 841: “An irregularity or error cannot be availed of after verdict unless it was objected to at the time of occurrence.” The purpose is to give the trial judge a chance to correct the error in real time.
There is a narrow exception. La. Code Crim. Proc. Art. 920 allows the appellate court to consider what are called “errors patent on the face of the record.” The article reads: “The following matters and no others shall be considered on appeal: (1) An error designated in the assignment of errors, and (2) An error that is discoverable by a mere inspection of the pleadings and proceedings and without inspection of the evidence.”
Louisiana courts have recognized a defined set of errors as patent. These include an illegal sentence, a sentence imposed without required benefit conditions, failure to credit time served, lack of subject matter jurisdiction, an indictment that fails to charge a crime, and failure to comply with mandatory sentencing statutes. Every Louisiana criminal appeal includes a patent-error review for these categories, even when no specific objection was made at trial.
Even when an error is preserved and found, the conviction is not automatically reversed. La. Code Crim. Proc. Art. 921 states: “A judgment or ruling shall not be reversed by an appellate court because of any error, defect, irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights of the accused.”
The controlling test is from State v. Johnson, 94-1379 (La. 11/27/95); 664 So. 2d 94: The question is “whether the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial is surely unattributable to the error.”
A focused appellate attorney works in all three lanes. They identify which errors are preserved, which may qualify as patent errors, and how to argue that a preserved error was not harmless.
An appellate brief is not a retelling of the trial. It is a written legal argument written to judges, for judges. The appellate judges were not in the trial courtroom. The persuasive work happens on paper, and the difference between a strong brief and a weak one often comes down to how the writer handles the standard of review.
The standard of review controls how much deference the appellate court gives the trial court’s ruling. Some issues are reviewed de novo, meaning the appellate court reviews the issue completely fresh and gives no deference to the trial court’s decision. Other issues are reviewed for manifest error or abuse of discretion, both of which give the trial court significant room. The right argument depends on which standard applies to which issue.
A well-written appellate brief identifies the strongest legal arguments, ties each one to specific pages of the record, cites controlling authority, and answers the prosecution’s counterarguments before they are made. Every legal term is translated. Every record citation is precise. Nothing is wasted.
The clock starts at sentencing. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 914 sets the filing deadline for a motion for appeal: 30 days after the judgment or ruling, or 30 days after a ruling on a timely-filed motion to reconsider sentence under art. 881.1, whichever is later. Under Louisiana law, you generally have 30 days from sentencing to file your motion for appeal. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 914. Deadlines vary based on your specific circumstances. Consult an attorney immediately to protect your rights.
The 30-day deadline for a motion to reconsider a sentence under art. 881.1 runs from sentencing in felony cases. As discussed above, that motion must be filed to preserve an excessive sentence claim for appeal.
Direct appeal and post-conviction relief are two separate paths. A direct appeal reviews legal errors that appear in the trial record.
Post-conviction relief is filed later and can raise issues outside the record, such as newly discovered evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, or a newly recognized constitutional right that applies retroactively.
Post-conviction relief is governed by La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 930.8. Under current Louisiana law, prisoners must file complete post-conviction relief applications within two years of the date the judgment of conviction and sentence becomes final, which includes the Louisiana Supreme Court’s action on any writ application.
Acts 2025, No. 393 (effective August 1, 2025) significantly tightened the exception provisions and introduced strict abandonment rules with very limited exceptions. Deadlines vary based on your specific circumstances. Consult an attorney immediately to protect your rights
What is a reversible error in a Louisiana criminal case?
A reversible error is a legal mistake at trial serious enough that the appellate court finds it likely affected the verdict. Not every error qualifies. Under La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 921 and the State v. Johnson standard, an error is harmless if the guilty verdict is surely unattributable to it.
What does “preserving an error for appeal” mean?
Preserving an error means objecting to it at the moment it happens at trial. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 841 requires a contemporaneous, specific objection. A focused appellate attorney knows which errors were preserved, which may qualify as errors patent under La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 920 and how to argue that a preserved error was not harmless.
How long does a criminal appeal take in Louisiana?
A typical Louisiana criminal appeal moves through the Third Circuit Court of Appeal, which covers the Acadiana region and South Louisiana, and may continue to the Louisiana Supreme Court on a writ application. Timelines vary widely based on case complexity, transcript length, and court docket. No specific outcome or timeline can be guaranteed.
Can you appeal your conviction if you accepted a plea deal in Louisiana?
Plea agreements usually include waivers of certain appeal rights. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 881.2(A)(3) bars appeal of a sentence imposed in conformity with a plea agreement set forth in the record. Exceptions may apply for involuntary pleas, ineffective assistance of counsel, or jurisdictional issues. Pleas with a presentence investigation (PSI) with no “cap” may also be eligible for appeal of the sentence only. Speak with an attorney about your specific plea.
What is the difference between a direct appeal and post-conviction relief in Louisiana?
Under Acts 2025, No. 393 (effective August 1, 2025), the post-conviction deadline runs two years from the date the judgment of conviction and sentence become final, which includes the Louisiana Supreme Court’s action on any writ application. The amended framework also tightened the exception provisions and introduced strict abandonment rules. Both paths have strict deadlines. Consult an attorney immediately to protect your rights.
If you or someone you love was convicted and you believe errors were made at trial, call Ikerd Law Firm at (337) 366-8994 for a confidential consultation. There is no obligation, and the call is free.
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