State v. Martinez

This case is about when a person can pursue a direct appeal from a criminal conviction if the defense attorney fails to follow the Rules of Appellate Procedure for entering notice of appeal. A direct appeal from a criminal trial is the first and sometimes the only way for a convicted person to get a new trial or other relief if a judge committed legal errors during the trial. Despite the importance of direct appeals, trial attorneys occasionally fail to follow the technical rules for initiating an appeal, and people who are convicted are the ones to suffer the consequences. NCAJ and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief to argue against the State’s proposed change to the rules for restarting an appeal after the trial attorney fails to follow the technical rules; more broadly speaking, NCAJ and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation argued to ensure people who go to trial do not lose their chance to correct errors at trial because the trial attorneys made technical mistakes.

In this case, after his conviction on burglary charges, Mr. Martinez stated in open court, “I’m going to take it up,” as he was taken from the courtroom. Although his trial counsel understood this to be an expression of Mr. Martinez’s intent to appeal, said counsel did not enter an appeal for his client, nor did he provide any advice or information about the right to appeal, how to exercise that right, etc, as he was required to do under rulings from the United States Supreme Court. Consequently, Mr. Martinez did not get a direct appeal under the normal procedures.

Mr. Martinez subsequently filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the N.C. Court of Appeals to restart his appeal, as has been commonly done. Three judges on the Court of Appeals dismissed the petition without prejudice, allowing Defendant to re-file a petition identifying meritorious issues on appeal. This requirement that the petition identify underlying appellate issues—in other words, substantive errors at the trial other than the trial attorney’s failure to enter notice of appeal—before the appeal could be pursued was a departure from precedent from both North Carolina Courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Martinez re-filed his petition, which was granted by a second panel of three judges from the Court of Appeals, which then remanded to the trial court for a hearing to restart Mr. Martinez’s direct appeal. The State filed a petition for discretionary review, which was granted by the Supreme Court of NC.

NCAJ and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation contend in their amicus brief that the State seeks to restructure the appellate system in criminal cases. Defendants first have a right of direct appeal. If the defendant does not follow the Rules of Appellate Procedure’s requirements for initiating a direct appeal, the typical remedy has been to file a petition for writ of certiorari to restart the appeal. The United States Supreme Court has already held that to restart a direct appeal, i.e., to pursue a belated appeal, a person does not have to show an error at the trial beyond the trial attorney’s failure to assist the defendant in pursuing a direct appeal. However, the State seeks to require a defendant to not only show a legal error in the trial before restarting the appeal, but to prove through a motion for appropriate relief that the trial attorney acted unreasonably in assisting the client with pursuing a direct appeal. This approach would be extremely inefficient, especially for indigent criminal defendants and the taxpayer-funded organizations that represent them. The roles of the Office of the Appellate Defender (which normally handles direct appeals) and North Carolina Prison Legal Services (which handles motions for appropriate relief) would be confused and duplicated, substantially overburdening both organizations. Moreover, the convoluted procedure proposed by the State would be similarly inefficient for the State, the courts, and even victims.