I'm a criminal appellate lawyer and yeah, we lose all the time. Let me tell you about the most common way I lose: harmless error. https://twitter.com/RMFifthCircuit/status/1384620184711823365

My job in representing convicted defendants is to find ways that their trial was unfair--errors--and argue why those errors made a difference to the jury. If there's a reasonable likelihood that the error resulted in a guilty verdict then I'm cooking with gas.

If there was an error but it didn't make a difference, then it's a harmless error and the conviction is affirmed. When there's a lot of evidence against a person, then the list of errors that make a difference gets a lot shorter.

Another difficulty is when the alleged crime is caught on video. The appellate court can't make credibility determinations about witnesses because they didn't see how they testified, couldn't listen to their tone, look them in the eye, etc like the jury did.

So the appellate court has to defer to the credibility findings of the jury by believing the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict. So if there's some testimony that supports the verdict and some that doesn't, the appellate court will reject the testimony that doesn't.

But when there's a video, the appellate court can just watch the video and judge what it shows (called a de novo review--use this term to impress you friends!).

I predict the appellate court will watch the video, decide that it's overwhelming evidence of guilt, and find that any errors the defense raises on appeal are harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence.