No criminal justice system is perfect. As hard as the United States legal system strives to prevent innocent men and women from being wrongly convicted of crimes, incorrect verdicts can, do, and will happen. The appeals system is one of the many precautionary measures against such mistaken judgments.
Though appellate courts have impressive judicial powers, they do have one important limitation: they can only step in when someone files an appeal; regardless of how unfair or bungled a trial may have been, if no appeal is filed, the appellate court cannot take action.
Authority of Appellate Courts
In the appeals process, appellate or "higher" courts, have the authority to affirm, reverse, modify, and/or remand the verdicts handed out by trial or "lower" courts.
- Affirmed - means that the appeals court found no error in the lower court's handling of a case and agrees with the decision reached.
- Reversed - means that the appellate court did find error in the lower court and has decided to contradict the ruling entirely.
- Modify - appeals courts may also change certain portions of a trial court's judgment as they see fit.
- Remand - an appellate court may also send a case back to the lower court for reconsideration, usually with guidelines to direct the decision. This option may be ordered in addition to an affirmation, reversal, or modification.
Despite their significant powers, appellate courts will, in most situations, limit themselves to evaluating the procedures of the lower courts; that is, they will review the way a lower court handled a case, but only rarely do appellate courts deal with findings of fact established at trial.
In fact, despite the term "appellate court," appeals are handled very differently from the common concept of a trial. The appeals court is more concerned with how results or verdicts were determined than with what the results or verdicts are. It would take egregious error during a lower court trial for an appeals court to step in with a de novo ruling - one which changes or reverses even the findings of fact made by the lower court.
Eligibility for Appeal
A convicted defendant has an almost unlimited right to appeal in the United States, except when the conviction occurs as the result of a guilty plea, in which case special permission is required for an appeal. The appeals system operates in a hierarchical system; each court has authority over the decisions of the courts below it. The highest court is the US Supreme Court, whose decision is final.
On the other hand, prosecutors are generally unable to appeal a verdict of not guilty. The double jeopardy clause of the US Constitution prohibits prosecutors from trying a person twice for the same offense, thus ruling out the possibility of an appeal.
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