5.6 The Appeals Process, Standard of Review, and Appellate Decisions
5.6 The Appeals Process, Standard of Review, and Appellate Decisions
Lore Rutz-Burri; Kate McLean; and Chantel Chauvin
The Appeals Process
The government cannot appeal a jury’s decision to acquit the defendant (find them “not guilty”). Thus, most criminal appeals involve defendants who have been found guilty at trial. 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). This is called an interlocutory appeal. 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. When the defendant appeals, they are now referred to as the appellant, and the State is the appellee. (Note that often the court will use the words petitioner and respondent. 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).
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. No trial is perfect, so the goal is to ensure there was a fair, albeit imperfect, trial. Accordingly, the appellate courts’ review for fundamental, prejudicial, or plain error. 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. 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.
Appellate judges generally sit in panels of three judges. They read the appellant’s brief (a written document filed by the appellant), the reply brief (a written document filed by 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 who are not parties to the case. The appellate panel will generally listen to very short oral arguments (20 minutes or less) by the parties’ attorneys. During these oral arguments, it is common for the appellate judges to interrupt and ask the attorneys questions about their positions. The judges will then consider the briefs and arguments, meeting to deliberate and decide based on majority rule.
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. When the case is reversed, in most instances, the court simply will req