If you do not agree with the sentence you receive, you may appeal to a higher court. You have only thirty days to appeal or you lose your right to do so. You may request your trial Judge to set bail, pending your appeal. If he/she rules against you, you can request a hearing by the appeals court but their opinion will again depend on your case.

The appellate court does not rehear testimony or reexamine evidence but proceeds instead by reviewing the record of your trial, documented as a brief, along with written and oral arguments by your counsel. The appellate courts follow extremely technical rules and will not even read briefs that do not adhere to their requirements.

Appeals take a long time to be resolved six to twelve months is not uncommon from the date of filing an appeal until a decision is issued by an intermediate appellate court in Pennsylvania.

Findings of fact and interpretation of or weight of evidence by a trial court are also hard to overturn o appeal. Discretionary rulings by a trial court a hard to overturn. The best appellate issues to raise are ones related to errors of law by the trial court. The errors of law must not be "harmless errors" or the appeal will not be successful.

Despite the uphill nature of an appeal, a defendant with a case that is headed for trial should always keep the appellate process in mind. Sometimes an appellate issue will jump out at trial, but an important part of your defense should be to "farm" appellate issues at each stage of the criminal process. You should try to cast as many seeds as possible, and if you get lucky, you may be able to harvest a ripe appellate issue later on down the road.

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