If the court finds you guilty, you still have real options: you can challenge the conviction by filing an appeal or a motion for a new trial, you can shape the sentence itself through the presentence report and your right to speak at sentencing, and in some cases you can pursue post-conviction relief years later. The catch is timing. In federal criminal cases, the notice of appeal is due 14 days after judgment,1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 4 – Appeal as of Right, When Taken and some new-trial motions are due in the same 14 days, so what you do in the first two weeks matters more than almost anything that follows.
The First Days After the Verdict
Write down every date the judge announces. Sentencing in federal court is usually set weeks or months out to allow the presentence investigation, and other deadlines run from the date of judgment rather than from sentencing. A single missed cutoff can forfeit your right to challenge the conviction at all.
Your custody status is the most immediate issue. Under federal law, detention is the default once you’ve been found guilty. The judge can only release you pending sentencing if you show by clear and convincing evidence that you aren’t a flight risk and aren’t a danger to the community.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3143 – Release or Detention of a Defendant Pending Sentence or Appeal For serious violent offenses, drug crimes carrying ten years or more, and certain repeat offenses, you must also show a substantial likelihood that a motion for acquittal or new trial will succeed. State courts use similar frameworks with different specifics.
Talk to a lawyer immediately about what comes next. If you had counsel at trial and you’re satisfied with that work, this is the conversation about appeal strategy and sentencing preparation. If you represented yourself, or if you think your trial lawyer’s performance was a problem, bring in a new attorney now. Several clocks start on the day of judgment, and some of them run in days.
Shaping the Sentence
Sentencing is where defendants have the most direct influence on the outcome and the place they most often underestimate. Two pieces of the process do most of the work: the presentence report and what you and your lawyer put in front of the judge at the hearing.
The Presentence Report
Before sentencing, a probation officer prepares a presentence investigation report containing your criminal history score, a recommended guideline range, and a narrative of the offense that may not match the trial record. The officer interviews you about family, education, employment, health, substance use, and finances, and also interviews prosecutors, law enforcement, victims, treatment providers, family members, and employers, with a home visit when possible.3United States Probation and Pretrial Services. Presentence Investigation
Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32, you must receive the report at least 35 days before sentencing, and you have 14 days to file written objections to factual errors, miscalculated guideline ranges, or significant omissions.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 32 – Sentencing and Judgment This is where most of the real sentencing work happens. If the report overstates your role, inflates your criminal history, or applies the wrong guideline and you don’t push back in writing, that error becomes the basis for your sentence. Read it line by line with your attorney.
Mitigating Evidence
Mitigation is anything that supports a lighter sentence. The categories judges see most often include:
- A clean record before the offense.
- A minor role in a larger scheme, which can trigger a downward adjustment under the guidelines.
- Mental health or substance abuse evidence tied to the offense, especially when paired with a concrete treatment plan.
- Community ties: employment records, educational achievements, family responsibilities, volunteer work, and character witnesses.
Your Right to Speak
Before announcing the sentence, the judge must address you directly and give you the chance to say something on your own behalf. This is called allocution.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 32 – Sentencing and Judgment The statements that land are genuine, specific, and take responsibility without making excuses. A generic apology read off a sheet of paper rarely moves a judge.
Victims have a parallel right. They can describe the emotional, physical, and financial harm the crime caused, in writing or in person, and the judge weighs those statements in deciding the sentence.5Department of Justice. Victim Impact Statements You cannot prevent a victim impact statement. The response is a strong mitigation case so the judge hears both sides.
Appealing the Conviction
An appeal asks a higher court to review the trial for legal errors. It is not a second trial. The appellate court does not hear new witnesses or weigh new evidence. The question is whether the trial court applied the law correctly and whether the proceeding was fair.
Grounds
Common grounds include improper jury instructions, evidence that should have been excluded or wrongly kept out, prosecutorial misconduct, and errors in applying the sentencing guidelines. Another frequent basis is ineffective assistance of counsel, which requires showing both that your lawyer’s performance fell below an objectively reasonable standard and that there is a reasonable probability the outcome would have been different without the deficient performance.6Justia. Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668 (1984) Courts give trial attorneys wide latitude on strategy, so this standard is hard to meet.
Deadlines and the Process
In federal criminal cases, you have 14 days after the judgment to file the notice of appeal with the trial court clerk.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 4 – Appeal as of Right, When Taken State deadlines vary but typically fall between 10 and 90 days. Courts enforce these cutoffs strictly. The notice itself is often a single-page form, but everything else flows from filing it on time.
Once the notice is in, the trial court assembles the record, both sides submit written briefs, and in some cases the appellate court holds oral argument. The whole process usually takes many months to over a year. If you cannot afford counsel, you have a constitutional right to an appointed attorney for your first appeal. That right does not extend to discretionary appeals such as a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Staying Out of Custody During the Appeal
Release pending appeal is not automatic. The judge must find, by clear and convincing evidence, that you aren’t a flight risk or danger and that the appeal raises a substantial legal question likely to result in reversal, a new trial, or a reduced sentence.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3143 – Release or Detention of a Defendant Pending Sentence or Appeal Most people with prison sentences start serving them while the appeal is pending.
Asking for a New Trial
A motion for a new trial goes to the same judge who presided at trial, not to a higher court. If granted, the verdict is erased and the case starts over. The prosecution has to retry it, which sometimes produces a different result or a dismissal if key evidence has weakened.
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33 sets two deadlines. If the motion is based on newly discovered evidence, you have three years after the guilty verdict. For any other ground, including prosecutorial misconduct, jury tampering, or legal errors during trial, the deadline is 14 days.7Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 33 – New Trial State courts have their own timelines, but the split between newly discovered evidence and everything else is common across jurisdictions.
To win on newly discovered evidence, you generally have to show the evidence was not available before or during trial despite reasonable efforts to find it, and that it is significant enough to have likely changed the verdict. Most of these motions are denied. The bar is deliberately high. If the motion fails, you can still pursue an appeal.
Post-Conviction Relief After Direct Appeals
Once direct appeals are exhausted, federal prisoners have one more avenue: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence. The recognized grounds are that the sentence violated the Constitution or federal law, the court lacked jurisdiction, the sentence exceeded the legal maximum, or the conviction is otherwise open to collateral attack.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2255 – Federal Custody; Remedies on Motion Attacking Sentence
The deadline is one year, measured from whichever is latest: the date the conviction becomes final (all direct appeals done), the date a government-created obstacle to filing is removed, the date the Supreme Court recognizes a new right that applies retroactively, or the date you discover (or should have discovered) new facts supporting the claim.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2255 – Federal Custody; Remedies on Motion Attacking Sentence
Many ineffective-assistance claims land here rather than on direct appeal, because the trial record often does not contain enough information to raise the issue earlier. If the court finds merit, it can vacate the conviction, order resentencing, or grant a new trial. State prisoners have a parallel remedy through habeas corpus petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, with the added requirement that you first exhaust all available state remedies.
What Else the Sentence Can Include
A guilty verdict almost always carries financial consequences on top of any prison time. Federal law sets default maximum fines by offense severity, but if the crime produced financial gain or caused financial loss, the court can impose up to twice the gain or twice the loss, whichever is greater, which can far exceed the defaults.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3571 – Sentence of Fine For crimes of violence, property offenses, and certain fraud cases, federal courts must order restitution in the full amount of the victim’s losses without considering your ability to pay.10GovInfo. 18 USC 3663A – Mandatory Restitution to Victims of Certain Crimes Restitution survives incarceration, and the government can garnish wages, seize tax refunds, and place liens on property to collect.
Most federal prison sentences also include a term of supervised release that begins the day you walk out of custody. The maximum length depends on the offense: up to five years for serious felonies, three for mid-level felonies, and one year for lower-level felonies and misdemeanors.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3583 – Inclusion of a Term of Supervised Release After Imprisonment Standard conditions include regular check-ins with a probation officer, staying in your judicial district, maintaining employment, avoiding people with felony records, and reporting any contact with law enforcement.12United States Courts. Overview of Probation and Supervised Release Conditions Violating supervised release can send you back to prison, and possessing drugs, possessing a firearm, or repeatedly failing drug tests triggers mandatory revocation.
Consequences Beyond the Sentence
The formal sentence is only part of what a conviction does to your life. Collateral consequences follow a criminal record and can last years or indefinitely.
Employment often becomes harder: background checks are routine, and some licensed industries deny or revoke credentials after a conviction. Housing is similar, with private landlords screening applicants and federal public housing authorities able to deny admission based on criminal activity.
For non-citizens, the stakes are higher. A conviction can trigger removal proceedings, and crimes classified as aggravated felonies under immigration law carry mandatory removal and permanent bars on asylum, cancellation of removal, and voluntary departure.13Congress.gov. Immigration Consequences of Criminal Activity Convictions involving fraud or other conduct categorized as crimes of moral turpitude also create removal grounds. The Supreme Court has held that defense attorneys must advise non-citizen clients about potential immigration consequences before a guilty plea.14Justia. Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 US 356 (2010)
Most states restrict voting for people with felony convictions, with rules ranging from loss only during incarceration to permanent disenfranchisement. Felony convictions also disqualify you from jury service in most jurisdictions and from possessing firearms under federal law.
Clearing Your Record Later
Once you’ve served the sentence, you may eventually be able to petition to have the record expunged or sealed. Expungement destroys or removes the record; sealing makes it inaccessible to the general public while keeping it available to law enforcement and courts. Either way, most background checks won’t surface the conviction.
Federal convictions are very difficult to expunge. The only statutory exception is for first-time simple drug possession under the Controlled Substances Act. State options are broader, but eligibility depends on the offense, the sentence, and a waiting period after you complete it. Violent felonies and sex offenses are generally ineligible in most states. If you were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated, both federal and state systems offer clearer paths to clearing the record.