Maybe, and I'm just throwing ideas around, make it a rule that if a banned player requests for a second opinion of someone other than the person handling their appeal, they will get one. It would work in the same fashion as how asking for a lawyer in America does. If they ask for another opinion the staff member must get one before deciding anything else. The pros are that bias is less likely to happen, but the cons are that your appeal may take longer to be completed.
This will make it the players responsible for asking for another opinion. Of you fail to ask and you later cry about bias then that's on you. If you ask and the staff member fails to get you one before making a decision they will be punished.
Couldn't you make like a dedicated lmod group for ban appeals? Sounds kinda strange, yeah.. but even without necessarily giving them powers you could have their job be to sort out/hear out the player's side of the story and then communicate that to higher staff (not necessarily the person who banned them in the first place, please!) so that action can be taken.
If you were to make that lmod position a necessary gateway to higher staff (smod+?) you could kill two birds with one stone - give people incentive to apply to such an unrewarding position as well as sort out undedicated staff members from the real deal. Cuz I mean... nothing says dedication like sifting through a huge pile of shit in order to be of service to the community.
Maybe, and I'm just throwing ideas around, make it a rule that if a banned player requests for a second opinion of someone other than the person handling their appeal, they will get one. It would work in the same fashion as how asking for a lawyer in America does. If they ask for another opinion the staff member must get one before deciding anything else. The pros are that bias is less likely to happen, but the cons are that your appeal may take longer to be completed.
This will make it the players responsible for asking for another opinion. Of you fail to ask and you later cry about bias then that's on you. If you ask and the staff member fails to get you one before making a decision they will be punished.