Asked 2/27/2016 – Houston, TX

My brother has served 13 of a 30 years sentence for aggravated robbery and burglary. The lawyer required an investigation to evaluate the possibility of proceeding with a writ of habeus corpus. It took just over two years to produce the evaluation. I heard from him roughly every 4-6 months in that time. We’ve made the majority of calls to him. He agreed to meet and present the evaluation over a year ago, but canceled that meeting like several others. It took me confronting him to get the ball moving and/or to get a status update of things that were being done. When confronted he says he has no obligation to give periodic reports.

Per his evaluation, in the absence of an evidentiary hearing, it will take 6 months to get to trial and another 4 months to be done at max. However, I don’t trust his integrity, his disregard for client concerns, nor his ability to manage expectations.

Answer

You do not feel comfortable with the attorney you have retained. You must get another lawyer. I do not know if this attorney is giving you good or bad advice; it appears, however, that you would not believe this man if he told you the sky was blue. You can’t face the uphill fight of trying to overturn a conviction AND fight your own lawyer as well. If you don’t’ trust him, you don’t trust him. You don’t have to have an explanation of your feelings, and those feelings may not even be reasonable to most people. But that doesn’t matter. The attorney that is working on your case has not done enough for YOU to have confidence in him. You and your brother deserve more.