The appeal process is complicated and difficult to navigate. Call our team of California criminal appeals lawyers for a FREE consultation.Discover New Jersey's ineffective assistance of counsel standards for a claim involving trial, appellate, or plea agreement counsel. You can get a new lawyer to file an appeal on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. Claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel shall be raised exclusively on direct appeal of a final judgment or order. A defendant who wishes to prove that he had incompetent or ineffective counsel at trial does not have an easy road to hoe in convincing the trial judge. As to Watkins' cause of death, petitioner raises several new arguments in the context of his assertion he received ineffective assistance of counsel. O "Ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth. Some of the key takeaways are that defendants have the right to retain counsel of their choice and discharge retained counsel they no longer wish to retain. The judgment may be overturned because of the ineffective assistance of counsel, a violation of the.