Litigation takes forever. Especially when you factor COVID in. I'm still litigating cases from over a decade ago that are probably several years from resolution, just in the district court. Then you can spin through appeals courts for another five years. And that's civil.
Criminal, especially a death row case, can take 20+ years to exhaust every level of appellate review. In Illinois there are at least nine levels of review available to you without going through second rounds of review, state habeas, and collateral attacks like applications for clemency, pardons etc. If you're not paying for lawyers, expect each level to take around two years or more.
That's wild, I had no idea. I have trouble imagining a case where it's worth spending 30 years coming to a conclusion, but I guess that's one many reasons I'm not a corporate tax lawyer!
One such repeating case ended up settling for over $10B, so it was definitely worth it!
To clarify, they spent decades litigating the same fundamental issue for each year’s tax filings, with each filing year taking multiple years to get to court. The plaintiffs won every single case until the government finally settled all the remaining tax years for that amount. Each year prior was worth hundreds of millions.
Criminal, especially a death row case, can take 20+ years to exhaust every level of appellate review. In Illinois there are at least nine levels of review available to you without going through second rounds of review, state habeas, and collateral attacks like applications for clemency, pardons etc. If you're not paying for lawyers, expect each level to take around two years or more.