Asked in Criminal Law and Appeals / Appellate Law for Maryland

Q: Someone had a trial for 5 days and one of the days transcripts are missing what could possibly happen next or be done?

This is year 5 that they have served, this is in the state of Maryland, they did appeal but are unable to fight case because parts of the transcripts are missing, the charges are murder, attempt murder, armed robbery etc, little to no evidence, no line up was done,

1 Lawyer Answer

A: Impossible to ascertain from your post what, if any, basis there would be to change the result after 5 years, a (completed?) appeal, and unknown circumstances and relevance of the missing day's transcript. A lawyer would have to review the entire case file, talk to trial and appellate counsel to get ther insights as to what they perceive to be the errors committed, and read any opinions issued in the appeal. It will require many hours of review (and possibly travel to the courthouse to look at evidence and the case file, and meet with the defendant at jail) before being able to provide an opinon, and any post-conviction options may be limited at this point. It will cost you, with no certainty that a reasonable basis to prevail will be uncovered. You have stated there is "little to no evdence"--yet, there was a prosecution, and a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. There must have been more than "a little" evidence, and certaintly more than "no" evidence, but trying to prevail at this late date on an insufficiency-of-the-evidence argument is probably impossble unless there is new DNA analysis or discovery of other new evidence of actual innocence to overturn the result (such as recantation of the testimony of key eyewitness(es) in the case, or proof of identification of the actual assailant through other evidence not available at the trial). There may be other avenues to explore of a Constitutional dimension, but your post does not present any factual basis to evaluate what those grounds might be. You should organize your facts and grounds that you believe are relevant to the defendant's wrongful conviction, and thn present them to a lawyer and obtain a confidential opinion as to whather there appears to be the possibility of changing the result, and the estimated cost to review the case further to provide a better opinion as to what, if anything, can be done at this point.

Matthew J. Bronson agrees with this answer

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