Key to the diagram
1 Your legal team should talk to you about an appeal as soon as you are convicted. You need to fill in a Form NG (Notice and Grounds) and get it back to the Crown Court within 28 days. You can get the form from the Court, from an Appeals Officer in prison, from your solicitor, or from the Court Service (new window) Web site. Time starts to run from the day of your conviction. A separate 28 day time limit for appealing just against your sentence starts from your sentencing date, if it’s different.
2 The Crown Court sends your Form NG to the Criminal Appeal Office in the Strand in London. The office gets a file ready to be seen by one appeal judge, sitting in an office. There is no right of appeal: your form has to persuade the judge to give you ‘leave’ to appeal. After two or three months you will get a note from the single judge telling you the decision. If you disagree with it, you have 14 days in which to fill in the form on the back saying that you want to renew your application for leave, and get it back to the Strand.
3 This time, a ‘full court’ of three judges will read your papers and decide whether the single judge got it wrong. Because this is just about leave, and is not yet a full appeal, you will not usually be present. You get a written notice telling you the result.
4 When we refer a case to the Court of Appeal it by-passes the leave stage and goes straight to a full hearing. But you can only apply to us if:
- your application for leave has been refused by the single judge; or
- your application for leave has been refused by the full court; or
- you were granted leave, but lost at the appeal hearing; or
- you abandoned your application for leave, or your appeal; or
- you have not tried to appeal, and there are ‘exceptional circumstances’ (this is very rare).
5 There are two ways to arrive at an appeal hearing:
- the ‘leave’ route, where permission is granted by the single judge or by the full court;
- the Commission route, where we have referred your case even though leave has not been granted.
If the Court thinks your conviction is ‘unsafe’ they will quash it. Sometimes they order a retrial. Occasionally they substitute a new conviction for a different offence.
If the Court thinks your sentence was wrong they can reduce it, or change it for a different kind of sentence. They cannot increase it.
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