Chapter 3: STATE
APPELLATE COURTS
Does someone who
loses in a state trial, either civil or criminal, have the right to
appeal to some higher state court? The answer may surprise you: Yes,
but only if the state legislature allows it. No one has an inalienable,
federally protected right to carry a legal dispute to a state appeals
court. States are under no obligation to have appeals courts.
Of course, legislatures
commonly provide a statutory right to appeal. But they have, and employ,
the authority to attach strings by dictating when, where and how appeals
must be filed.
The appellate court
structure varies from state to state, and the names they are given can
be confusing. In New York, for example, a state trial court is called
the Supreme Court — the name most states give their highest tribunal.
The highest court in New York is the Court of Appeals.
In Texas, there
are two "highest" courts -- the Supreme Court for civil cases and the
appropriately named Court of Criminal Appeals for others.
Many states, including
North Carolina, use a two-tiered appellate court system. Some
state judicial systems have three appellate levels, or alternate appellate
courts depending on the type of case.
In North Carolina,
the intermediate appellate court is the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
The highest court is the North Carolina Supreme Court. Together
they constitute the Appellate Division of the General Court of Justice.
Both civil and criminal
cases can be appealed. Most cases go directly to the Court of Appeals,
although death penalty verdicts are appealed to the Supreme Court.
After the Court of Apeals rules, parties can go next to the Supreme
Court when the case involves a substantial question arising under the
Constitution of the United States or of North Carolina, or there is
a dissent in the Court of Appeals. Otherwise, the Supreme Court
has the discretion to decide which disputes it will review. In
some cases, the Supreme Court can allow the parties to bypass
the Court of Appeals and take an appeal directly to the Supreme Court.
North Carolina is
similar to many states where review by the highest court is discretionary.
If the highest court turns down review, the lower court's ruling is
left intact. In some states, that denial cannot accurately be called
a ruling or decision.
When a state's highest
court rules on what a state statute or constitutional provision means,
it is the final arbiter. No federal court, not even the U.S. Supreme
Court, can second-guess that state court's ruling on what a state law
or the state constitution requires.
One thing appellate
courts, state and federal, have in common is they generally are not
going to reconsider from scratch all the disputed facts that got hashed
out in the trial court. Appellate courts are not in business to second-guess
judges and juries about the facts of a case; they generally are more
interested in making sure the law -- statutes and legal precedent --
was followed.
Chapter
4: FEDERAL APPEALS COURTS