Lawyers love this game. Appeals after appeals and charge the stupid taxpayer. Seems there would be a better way out there.
It's not the lawyers but your state law. Often, death penalty convictions carry automatic appeals. Besides, lawyers who are appointed by the court on these cases, make very little off the taxpayers. On a case that we finished recently, we would have charged the guy $7,5000 - $10,000 to represent him. We were paid $1,400 by indigent defense. We have a bottom line we have to make every month, and if you're loaded up with taxpayer-paid cases, you won't meet that bottom line, yet they require the same amount of work and diligence that non-appointed cases require.
In other words, appointed lawyers are not willing to file frivilous appeals that cost his firm a few thousand dollars in time and costs, when he is only going to collect 1/4 of that. Plus we are not reimbursed for long distance or collect calls from the prison, mileage, travel time. We have to eat all that. We try to give the best defense we can with no frills.