A judge refused to refer the complaint. This is what is left.

The overwhelmingly common mistake is to send the Chairman the same complaint that the judge refused, sometimes literally the same file with a new addressee. There is no reason for a different result: the arguments have already been considered and rejected.

A complaint that has a chance does something different. It takes the refusal decision as its subject. It shows that a specific argument raised in the cassation complaint was not addressed at all in the refusal, or was addressed on a misreading of the record, or that the refusal is inconsistent with how the Supreme Court has decided the same question elsewhere. In other words it argues that the filter malfunctioned, not that the case is sad.

In our experience the cases where this remedy works share features: a clear, checkable legal error — most often in the calculation of the sentence, the combination of sentences, or the crediting of time in detention; a refusal decision that is formulaic and does not engage with that error; and published Supreme Court practice pointing the other way.

Where the complaint is essentially a disagreement with the evidence, it will not succeed, and we would rather tell a family that before they pay for it than afterwards.

The verdict, the appeal decision, the cassation decisions, and — critically — the refusal decision of the Supreme Court judge. Without that last document there is nothing to argue against. If you do not have it, it was sent to the person who filed the complaint; we can help establish where it went.