IV § 4 Criminal Briefs

If you file a brief in a criminal case with the Louisiana Supreme Court, you need to back up your arguments with specific references to the trial transcript. This means pointing to exact pages or locations where the problem you're complaining about actually happened. You can't just claim an error occurred without showing the court where to find it in the record.

If you skip this step, the court can simply ignore that argument. It won't dig through the transcript to find support for your claim on its own.

The rule also warns about a bigger risk. If you list an error you think happened during your trial but never actually explain it in your brief, the court can treat that error as if you gave up on it. In short, listing a problem isn't enough. You have to write about it and show exactly where it happened in the record, or the court may act like you never raised it at all.