![]() ![]() Officials in football, for example, will make a call, a ruling on the field, immediately after a play is made. Sports enthusiasts are familiar with the use of instant/video replay, and it provides us a good analogy. Appellate court judges must sometimes let a decision of a lower court stand, even if they personally don’t agree with it. Appellate courts do not consider each error in isolation, but instead, they look at the cumulative effect of all the errors during the whole trial. You have just learned that one function of the appellate courts is to review the trial record and see if there is a prejudicial or fundamental error. When reading an opinion, also known as decisions, from an appellate court, you can tell the procedural history of a case (i.e., a roadmap of where the case has been: what happened at trial, what happened as the case was appealed up from the various appellate courts). In some cases, however, the order of reversal might include a direction to dismiss the case completely, for example when the appellate court concludes that the defendant’s behavior does not constitute a crime under the law in that state. When the case is reversed, in most instances, the court simply will require a new trial during which the error will not be repeated. If the appellate court finds that no error was committed at trial, it will affirm the decision, but if it finds there was an error that deprived the losing party of a fair trial, it may issue an order of reversal. The judges will then consider the briefs and arguments and the panel will then meet and deliberate and decide based on majority rule. ![]() During these oral arguments, it is common for the appellate judges to interrupt and ask the attorneys questions about their positions. The appellate panel will generally listen to very short oral arguments, generally twenty minutes or less, by the parties’ attorneys. They read the appellant’s brief (a written document filed by the appellant), the reply brief (a written document filed by the the appellee), and any other written work submitted by the parties or friend of the court amicus curiae briefs. Amicus curiae are individuals or groups who have an interest in the case or some sort of expertise but are not parties to the case. By reviewing for error and then writing opinions that become case law, appellate courts perform dual functions in the criminal process: error correction and lawmaking.Īppellate judges generally sit in panels of three judges. Appellate courts will reverse the conviction and possibly send the case back for a new trial when they find that trial errors affected the outcome of the case. A lower court’s judgment will not be reversed unless the appellant can show that some prejudice resulted from the error and that the outcome of the trial or sentence would have been different if there had been no error. Accordingly, the appellate courts review for fundamental, prejudicial or plain error. No trial is perfect, so the goal is to ensure there was a fair, albeit imperfect, trial. In routine appeals, the primary function of appellate courts is to review the record to discern if errors were made by the trial court before, during, or after the trial. The petitioner is the party who lost in the last court who is petitioning the next level court for review the respondent is the party who won in the last court). (Note that often the court will use the words petitioner and respondent. When the defendant appeals, he or she is now referred to as the appellant, and the State is the appellee. Although the defendant is permitted to appeal after entering a guilty plea, the only basis for his or her appeal is to challenge the sentence given. The government may appeal a court’s pretrial ruling in a criminal matter before the case is tried, for example a decision to suppress evidence obtained in a police search. ![]() Thus, most criminal appeals involve defendants who have been found guilty at trial. The government cannot appeal a jury’s decision by acquitting the defendant, or finding the defendant not guilty. The Appeals Process, Standard of Review, and Appellate Decisions ![]()
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