Almost two months after filing the entire transcript of my trial in order to get my appeal reviewed by a panel of three judges, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office filed a motion to dismiss my appeal on the grounds that I never filed the transcript.
Dumb asses obviously never checked the court records that would prove that I did file the transcript.
I learned today that I was supposed to send the State Attorney’s Office a notice of filing, which of course, was never mentioned in the Pre Se Appellant Handbook, which is compiled by The Florida Bar.
But I’ve also learned that they should have notified me before filing the motion to dismiss in an attempt to clear up any misunderstandings.
My excuse is that I’m pro se. I didn’t know any better. The extent of my law training were the countless hours I spent in the University of Law library preparing my appeal.
What’s their excuse?
That they are just trying to take advantage of a pro se appellant?
Well that much is obvious. All one has to do is take a look at the State Attorney’s response to my original brief to see that they were unable to argue the merit of my argument, so they decided to focus on the fact that I did not follow proper legal procedure (filing the entire transcript), which I ended up doing because the law gives me 30 days to do so (which was enacted to protect pro se appellants).
Now I have to file an opposition to their motion by Monday in order to get it on the record that I did file the transcript, even though it should already be on the record.
After all, wouldn’t the court have already dismissed my appeal?
It took the court less than two weeks after the first time I filed my appeal to inform me that I needed to file the entire transcript. So I would think it would have taken them that long to inform me that my appeal had been dismissed had I not filed the transcript.
