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Clarissa appeal money

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Hello Clarissa supporters. We need to raise $25K for lawyer's fees to cover Clarissa's appeal. The total expected amount is $45K but we have already raised $20K from family members.

Clarissa's former sister-in-law, Deborah Butler is a lawyer. She will be working with a highly experienced lawyer, Nelson Lovins to conduct the appeal. He is older and mostly retired. He will delegate a lot of the work to Deb in order to reduce costs and he is well known in the Middlesex court district. He is not strictly an appeals attorney, but he is experienced in appeals. Deb is familiar with working with him and respects him greatly. Clarissa's brother in law, Hans and I met with Nelson for a couple of hours while Hans was in town. Clarissa also had an extended in-person meeting with him. Given Nelson's ability to reduce costs and his knowledge of the players in the Middlesex court district, Clarissa, and her family believe this is the way to go,

The appeal will be based on the failure of Clarissa's previous counsel during her defense. Yannetti failed to bring in expert testimony on Clarissa's mental state, failed to bring forth evidence by the Commonwealth's due date (causing lots of evidence to be rejected), and lastly, failed to produce the prosecution's evidence for Clarissa to review. In fact it appears he never even looked at it. This resulted in last minute surprises that Clarissa was not at all prepared for.

It is expected that the appeals process will take about six months. If the judge rejects the first appeal, we would then need to re-appeal in front of a new judge. The appeal is first brought to the judge who presided over the case, so we expect there is a high likelihood that we will need to take that next step.

I will plan to send out regular updates on how the process is going.

Thank you in advance for your timely consideration of this request.

Respectfully and with great appreciation for your support,

Lynette
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Donations 

  • Jill Fekete
    • $50
    • 10 mos
  • Anonymous
    • $300
    • 11 mos
  • Anonymous
    • $125
    • 11 mos
  • Jordan Weinstein
    • $1,000
    • 11 mos
  • Anonymous
    • $515
    • 11 mos
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Organizer

Deborah Butler
Organizer
Framingham, MA

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