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Something I (& my clients) find very frustrating about the appeals process is that it takes forever. Some who'll become my client may be jailed the moment he's convicted or even sooner, but from the date he's sentenced it can take months or years before the case even gets to me.
In NY the first step when you get convicted & appeal, if you're poor, is that the appeals court will appoint a lawyer or public defender office to represent you. This step alone can take over a year. Now you've got a lawyer, but they don't have any of the records they need.
Gathering all the records from the case (transcripts, court file, PSR, exhibits) takes months at least, partly because they have to be gathered from 4+ separate sources (court reporter, trial court, probation, DA's office). Only then can your lawyer really look at it.
Of course your lawyer (e.g. me) has other cases too, so it could take months before they read the whole record, figure out what issues to raise, & file a brief. After a couple months of briefing, you wait for the court to schedule the case.
Some cases are argued, others submitted without argument. After that it takes the court a few months to reach a decision—sometimes one or two months, sometimes more like a year. Finally, if you win something that gets you out of prison, you're not let out that day.
To add insult to injury, if your conviction/sentence is overturned and the state has no power to hold you anymore, the prison system will still take at least a few days to let you out. Of course, the state reimburses you for those few days of lost freedom. Haha just kidding.
Some of my clients are locked up for this whole process. Others are out, but might be on probation/parole with the threat of reincarceration hanging over their heads. Either way they've got a conviction on their record that makes it harder to get jobs, housing, & public benefits.
Nothing is done to make up for the harms you suffered from a conviction or sentence that's overturned. I've had clients spend years in prison, miss a kid's 1st birthday or a parent's death, or get injured while locked up, all for flawed convictions that were overturned on appeal.
There's technically a way to avoid this problem: you can ask the appeals court to stay your sentence until the appeal is decided. These stays are very rarely granted. Sometimes the court doesn't even get around to denying them until the person's already served the full sentence.
Needless to say there's a different set of rules for the rich, white, & powerful. https://twitter.com/srfeld/status/1219745899104079872?s=20
