I’m having an argument with my girlfriend about the process of appealing a legal decision. She claims that her high school business law teacher said that any case cane only be appealed once. I think both of them are ignorant, and that most cases can be appealed to the next highest court. For example, if I lose in Circuit Court, I would appeal the conviction and have my case moved to District Court. If I lose there, I move to the next highest court, and so on until I hit the Supreme Court. If I lose there, I’m SOL. I think she misinterpereted what her instuctor said and took it out of context. I think what he probably said (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know) is that if you lose your appeal, you can’t appeal that, which IIRC is correct.
Someone please help me settle this. Thanks a lot for the help.
The original court is charged with finding of fact (who did what, and was it illegal). If you lose, you can appeal (the judge screwed up, the jury screwed up, etc.). As long as you can find an issue to argue at another level, you can keep appealing - if you want to argue that the (state) law under which you were judged was contrary to established law, you can take it to federal court; if you want to argue that… (lawyers, you can jump in here), you can take it (wherever). If you can find a Constitutional or Treaty issues or conflicting (Federal) rulings, you can appeal to the Supremes.
Maybe someone is confusing “appeal” with “re-trial”?
There is a huge difference beween “finding of fact” and “mis-application of law” - the fact that you did not like the original verdict does not get you the right to endless appeals, but there is always another level, if you can find an angle - even the Supremes can be over-ridden by law and/or Constitutional amendment (see Dred Scott), and, in criminal cases, even that can be over-ridden by executive pardon.
Correction to happyheathen’s response: cases brought in state court only reach federal court if there is a federal issue at stake (e.g., the state law is unconstitutional). State courts have their own appeals courts and supreme courts.
wmulax, your girlfriend is confused. But you’re using the wrong terms for federal courts. Cases can start in district court, then can go to the Court of Appeals, then can go to the Supreme Court. In this simple model, you potentially have two shots at arguing that a mistake of law was made. There are also paths a case could take that would lead to many more appeals, but my knowledge of procedure is too limited to explain them all. Note that you may or may not have your appeal heard, so you might be “SOL” after your first loss.
In the Federal Court system, if you lose at the district court (trial court) level, regardless of whether it is a civil case or a criminal case, you have an appeal of right to the circuit court. That is usually the only appeal. The only appeal that can be taken from the Federal Circuit court is to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is a discretionary appeal, meaning that the Supreme Court exercises its discretion in whether or not to hear the appeal. The Supreme Court rejects 99% of the appeals that folks attempt to get up there. So in most federal cases, there is only one appeal.
State court structures differ greatly from state-to-state, but most follow the basic structure outlined above, with one appeal of right to an appellate court and one discretionary appeal (which usually will not be accepted) to a state supreme court. In my experience, subject to state differences, most state cases only have one appeal.
The big exception here, as noted by chula, is a state case with federal issues, such as a criminal death penalty case. It starts in state court, goes to the state court of appeals, a death penalty case is usually considered an appeal of right to the state supreme court as well. That’s two appeals. Then, alleging civil rights deprivations, the condemned could file a writ of habeus corpus in federal district court, have an appeal of right to the federal circuit court, and a discretionary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I imagine that your girlfriends’ professor said something like
“in the great majority of cases, there is only one appeal,” which I would agree with. Unless the case raises an issue of great public importance which would get a state supreme court or the u.s. supreme court excited about hearing the case, you’re typically only going to get one appeal.