Record Gathering For Your Federal Writ

Search Federal Court Records For Your Federal Writ

Additionally, you need to obtain access to everything the court has in its file. Federal courts are all online, so you can do any record gathering through a PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) account.  You can Google it for the district that you’re in and go to the website to create a free PACER account. You do have to put a card onto the account to be billed for the pages that you download or the things that you search for, so there is some cost to gathering certain records on the account.

You can also receive access to these records by going to the district court where you were convicted.

There’s computer terminal access at any district court that you can use to access the documents available on PACER. The court will not charge you to access and view the records, but you typically will be charged to print them.

Most of the time prisoners do not have access to these files, so a loved one (possibly you if you have someone in prison you’re seeking freedom for) may have to access these documents on behalf of the prisoner who wishes to use them.

Many times there’s confusion about what has occurred in the case, possibly because the trial attorney wasn’t communicating with you, or possibly because the entire process was misunderstood by one or multiple parties. For these reasons, it’s always a good idea to obtain access to these records in any situation.

You may find that some of the documents you want to retrieve on PACER are not publicly available because they’re sealed documents. For example, most documents that relate to the sentencing of the convicted are sealed.

To gain access to these documents, you have to obtain the defense file from your defense attorney. This is another reason it’s critical that you request the defense file, as you might want documents that are unavailable on PACER.

Get Copies of Court Transcripts

One other important thing you should do in your record gathering for your federal writ is to gather any and all available court transcripts. If your case went up on direct appeal, there should be reporter transcripts available.

You can typically get these transcripts through an appellate attorney if there was one involved in your case. If there wasn’t an appellate attorney present in your case, then you can get the transcripts directly from the court. In the instance that the transcripts were never made in the first place, you can request them to be made. Suppose you went through the plea process but never appealed.

In this situation, no transcripts would have been made. You can ask that those transcripts be made by requesting them from the court reporter. These transcripts do have a cost; however, the court will generate the transcripts at your request and bill you for them. There is a minor exemption from the payment, however: People who are indigent are entitled to get the transcripts done for them for free, but that’s only if they have already filed the 2255 motion and are afterward declared indigent for the purposes of obtaining the transcripts.

Get The Prosecutors File

The final recordset you will want to retrieve is the prosecutor’s file. They will at least have the same amount of discovery materials as the defense file has, but occasionally there will be more materials. If this occurs it may be worth considering claiming Brady evidence as a ground.

Claiming Brady evidence simply means you are claiming that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence that would have helped you defend yourself, or that they withheld evidence that would have helped lessen your punishment had you had access to the withheld documents or information. For this reason, access to these files is an absolute necessity.

Getting access to the prosecutor’s file is usually done through a Freedom of Information Act request. You can make this type of request to the actual agencies who investigated you, or you can request the information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecuted you.

There are some timelines for them to respond, and there are certain things that they can withhold in the foyer responses, so the entire process is something that you will have to navigate through efficiently to achieve the best results.