Welcome to AppellateAdvisor

Gold in them thar hills!

UPDATE 3-20-26 We’re still working on the transition from the not-even-an-amateur version of the site to the very-nicely-done professional version. Although I’m still collecting and summarizing the unpublished opinions, I have not posted any for a bit, and may not until the new look is ready. I have only a handful of visitors right now anyway, and I think they’re all members of my family. But this professional makeover is giving me an opportunity to re-do many things I ultimately regretted doing the way I started out. That involves some rewriting, not simply reorganizing what has already been written. And I plan to turn all of the cases I’ve summarized into individual posts rather than a long clump of several. That will make searches far more pleasant, because you won’t have to wade through a long post to find out WHICH case has the term you’re looking for. I don’t have a roll-out date, but it probably won’t be much longer. I have seen the prototype and am working with the pro on some of the cleanup (updating some of the language of the general website information that has become outdated or I hadn’t stated well in the first place). If you’ve visited this site and thought “oh, my” (in not necessarily a favorably impressed sense), I hope you’ll check in from time to time (weekly?) to see if the new me is online.

Brief update 3-7-26–A pro is looking at my site and gussying it up for me. I’m not sure of its roll-out date, but coming soon to a theater near me.

In the meantime, starting with Post 27 on 3-8-26, I am summarizing only a single case per post. I’ve changed the display so you will see five posts on the same page. My plan is to post five cases (posts) at a time, so single page should contain all that is new since the previous summaries were posted. (That’s the good new. The less good news is that now you will see five posts on every page, including –on the early post pages–the multiple-cases posts 1 through 26. I seek your patience. I may abate that problem at some point. See a few paragraphs from now.)

On Post 31 (also posted 3-8-26) I have set out an extensive explanation.

Among other possible advantages, it means that if you do a search on a term using the Search box, it will bring up every case summary with that term and (wait for it) ONLY the case summaries with that term. For summaries beginning with Post 27, you will not have to scroll through all the cases posted in a single post (the way they are currently laid out from Post 1 through Post 26, as many as 11 cases on a single post). I may at some point break Posts 1 through 26 into single-case posts, but that involves roughly 145 summaries that need to move from 26 posts to 145 posts. Holding your breath would be unwise. I’ll get there when and if I get there.

[Brief status update 2-20-24: You can now see my name and “disguised” email address on the “About me” page, under the Maybe I Can Help” section title.]

[Brief status update 2-17-26: I will soon resume posting my summaries. I hope to get two more posts up before February 23. I’m still working on learning how to make the website easy-ish to navigate, but several things have delayed my dive into the education I need to accomplish it. Fortunately, at this point, I have few readers–likely just family or myself. I’ve reset my expectation for a more full rollout, now looking toward the first part of March. Aside from any aesthetics, I’m looking at how to get a search function with a helpful search results; I’m looking at the navigation to see how to move easily between the individual posts; I’m working on being more efficient in my time for gathering the cases, summarizing them, and putting them into web-ready condition for posting; I’m hoping to find a noninvasive method of notifying those who want to be notified when I have added a new post (RSS, maybe?) (whatever THAT means). And for all the things I would like to accomplish, I want to avoid–or at least minimize–leaving a scent behind on any reader’s computer. I don’t want to trigger advertising or install something that places sneaky tracking cookies on others’ equipment. It would help if I knew what I was doing, but I’m sure I’ll run across exactly the right dumby book that will turn me into a primo webmaster. All I need is the time to read it and follow along. Shades of my Scouting days and reminiscent of a certain not-real frog, it isn’t easy being a tenderfoot!]

So as of the end of day January 15, 2026, my tenure of 37+ years at the Central California Appellate Program came to an end with my retirement. The office held a lovely send-off luncheon for me and wished me well in my next phase.

I’m not quite ready to fully launch my website. In the sense only that I don’t have everything working yet. You are, in fact, at my website. But you may notice that there are remnants of the WordPress ready-made theme (is that the right word?) that don’t make sense in the context of this website, and don’t work anyway. Now that I have all this free time, I can focus on the “how does this work?” aspect. I suppose I should phrase it more as “how do I get THAT to work?”

My vision is that this website will be of interest mainly to California attorneys with an interest in criminal law, particularly from the perspective of felony appeals. I have been summarizing Court of Appeal opinions (in criminal cases) that are NOT published but provide some level of relief to the defendant (no matter how slight). Who reads those, right? Well, I’m here to tell you, “There’s GOLD in them thar hills!” (See the “WHAT Gold?” page for elaboration.)

My hope is to post at least three times a week, covering an entire week’s worth of eligible unpublished opinions. But maybe that’ll be too big a bite to chew. In the three months I’ve been collecting “wins” daily, there have been more than 400, average a little more than 5.5 per weekday (yes, I keep a tally). In the past 73 days as I write this, the court has posted 1584 opinions (civil and criminal). Of those, 833 were titled “P. v. [party name],” which suggests they were criminal cases. During that time, I summarized (but have not yet posted) 284 that I felt had granted some form of relief to a defendant. (I have actually been collecting them longer, but I didn’t keep track of the total number of unpublished civil and criminal opinions for another month. I have close to 400 in the pot today, and have posted on only 113 as of Post 18. Time will tell whether I can catch up and keep up.)

I do think it is important for you to read the page “Posting Proclivities” because I try to explain what it is you’re seeing in my summaries. Hint, but only a tiny bit: What you read is very likely not verbatim from the opinions, though sometimes it may be .