One of the approaches you can take with your criminal appeal is to claim your attorney did not do a good job. However, making this claim is not as simple as showing you do no feel your attorney did everything he or she could to prove your innocence.
Cornell Law School explains that proving ineffective assistance of counsel is your right because you have the right to counsel under the constitution. Proving your attorney was ineffective requires you to show two things occurred.
Results would be different
You must show that due to the incompetence or actions of your attorney, you lost your case. You must show in your appeal that the actions of your attorney directly caused you to lose your case and that you would have otherwise won if you had a different attorney or your attorney acted in a different way.
You cannot use new evidence or other details to show your case results would have been different. You must link it to the actions of your attorney specifically.
Objective standard of reasonableness
The other thing you must show is that your attorney’s performance fell below a reasonable standard. The court weighs this based on average performances and the general expectations of what an attorney would do in the course of his or her job.
This is not as easy to prove as you may think. Not liking your attorney or even feeling he or she did not spend enough time on your case are rarely good reasons for the court to rule ineffective assistance of counsel. There must be a clear deviation from the professional standards and norms that the average attorney would display in a typical legal case.