I have been sentenced to death in a state court. I did the crime, there was solid evidence against me. Since I don’t want to die, I want an appeal. I tell my lawyer this and gets the ball rolling.
Which court do I appeal to first? I would think the court that convicted me, if that fails, a state district court and then the state supreme court. Then I would go to the Federal levels, all the way up to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the final step, which more or less refuses all cases such as this.
It seems that a lot of appeals are just to keep the prisoner alive that much longer instead of trying to prove innocence. This process keeps a bunch of lawyers paid, and even though these safeguards need to be in place, it seems that mostly it is a colossal waste of time. John Wayne Gacy was on Death Row for 14 years. The man was obviously guilty. Ted Bundy spent about 10 years on death row.
Does it matter which state you are from concerning the death penalty? Texas has the busiest death chamber with seemingly an execution per week. Other states have the death penalty on the books but are seemingly very slow in executing prisoners.
California’s death row is very backed up, with many prisoners who did their crimes and was sentenced back in the early 1980’s (Lawrence Bittaker was convicted of mutiple murder in 1981, and is still on Death Row 30 years later).
Two questions:
1.) What is the appeal process?
2.) How do some criminals like Bittaker sit on Death Row sit for decades before sentence?
Courts are divided into trial courts and appellate courts. You don’t appeal to a trial court (the one that convicted you) although an appellate court may in some instances remand certain items back to the trial court or lower appellate court for reconsideration.
In general, most jurisdictions in the US, including the federal system, have three levels of courts that deal with felonies. A trial court, a middle appellate court, and a supreme court. In the federal system, these are the District Courts, the US Courts of Appeal (aka circuit courts) and the US Supreme Court.
Having been convicted of capital murder in a state court, you could appeal your case to your state’s mid-level appeals court. Alternatively, if there is a question of federal law regarding your case, say the officers who arrested you violated your civil rights somehow, then you could also appeal to the federal district court in your area seeking injunctive relief – an order for the state court to do something or reconsider a decision.
Mostly, appeals from state trial courts are about matters of state law and don’t involve the federal system, though. If you have no luck at the middle appellate level, you can try and convince your state supreme court to hear the case. If you have no luck with them, and if there’s an issue of federal law at that point, you could appeal to the federal system. Certain types of federal appeals from state supreme courts can go directly to the US Supreme Court, though I don’t remember the details.
In Ohio, the voters a few years back passed a state constitutional amendment that barred the state courts of appeals from considering capital (death penalty) cases. All capital cases now go automatically from the trial court (in Ohio, the county court of common pleas) to the state supreme court, which far more often than not upholds the sentence. Federal appeals can drag the process out a bit more, but not as much as they used to. And I can’t think of the last time an Ohio governor pardoned a capital defendant - stays, sometimes; commutations, rarely; no pardons IIRC.
So suppose you did commit a criminal act for which a possible sentence is death. Obviously that’s the maximum sentence – they can’t execute you twice, or sentence you to death plus 30 years, or something. Does your case deserve the maximum penalty? Remember that 30 counts of premeditated torture-murder of small children, and one count of accidental felony murder, are both still murder. That’s why trial courts have a range of sentencing options. The kid who broke into a house on a dare and the guy who’s been committing burglaries consistently since 1975 are both charged under the same law, but one may get rehabbed by probation and the other likely not.
Are you sure that every bit of evidence was weighed properly, every question of law handled correctly, and fair and adequate representation was provided you at trial? Justice does nod sometimes. There was a case near here where the appointed defense attorney fell asleep repeatedly during the prosecution’s case. He surely wasn’t giving adequate representation to his client.
With an execution, there’s no “do over” – with any other sentence, it can be reconsidered and/or voided, and the exonerated convict set free, when evidence comes to light that proves he really didn’t do it, or really was only an accessory deserving 10 years, not death. Once you’ve executed him, you can’t bring him back to life.
Also, appellate procedures can be slightly more complex than outlined:
– An appeal may lie from an appellate court panel (3-5 judges) to the full appellate court sitting en banc
– The U.S. Supreme Court and a few state high courts hear almost no appeals, in the strict sense: cases where the loser at the next level down has the right to take the question up to the top court. Mostly they work by writ of certiorari: granting, or denying, petitions to hear ‘appeals’ from the second-level court’s decisions.
– In some cases, there are more than three levels. For example (not related to the death penalty but interesting in and of itself), a misdemeanor conviction in a New York Town or Village Justice Court can and in a few cases has gone through ten appeal levels: County Court, State Supreme Court in and for that county, State Supreme Court en banc for that judicial department, Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, single judge and en banc, State Court of Appeals, Federal District Court, Federal Circuit Court, panel nd en banc, and SCOTUS.
– Though this has been greatly throttled back, petitions for the writ of habeas corpus to hear various issues of law touching on a case can draw the process out even more.
In Illinois (as Elendil’s Heir stated for Ohio) appeals in death penalty cases go directly to the state Supreme Court and bypass the Appellate Court.* A direct appeal from the state supremes goes to the U.S. Supreme Court but has to raise federal constitutional or legal issues (as friedo pointed out) and the federal supremes have the discretion to refuse the case.
*For which I’m very grateful. I work for the Appellate Court, and while I have no problem drafting orders affirming a defendant’s life sentence, the prospect of reviewing a death penalty case would not be fun. :eek:
The biggest delaying factor is probably not the direct appeal of the conviction and sentence but collateral challenges. A convicted person can bring a civil case in the state or federal** trial court challenging his imprisonment or death sentence on the basis of alleged errors in the criminal trial, sentencing and/or direct appeal. Habeas corpus is the most common form, but states may have other methods. (Illinois, for instance, has several different forms a collateral case can take.) If the convict doesn’t obtain relief from the trial court, he can appeal the denial or dismissal of his collateral challenge to the appellate court. If he loses there, he can appeal to the supremes, who have the discretion to take the appeal or not.
**As a general rule, though, federal courts won’t allow a habeas or other collateral challenge to a state conviction unless the convict has made a collateral challenge in the state courts and taken it as far as it’ll go; that is, only after the convict has exhausted his remedies under state law. And of course a federal collateral challenge still needs a federal issue.
But that’s not all. :dubious: A convict who loses on his collateral challenge at all the levels can decide to file another civil case in the trial court raising the same or new collateral challenges. Of course, if he raises the same claim(s) as his earlier case, the trial court will dismiss the case as previously decided (res judicata), but he can appeal that decision. Prisoners with long sentences and nothing better to do tend to file multiple collateral challenges. I suppose it keeps them out of trouble, and it definitely keeps me employed.
As to pardons or other executive clemency, Illinois Governor George Ryan placed a moratorium on executions in 2000, then in 2003 – in his last days in office – cleared Illinois’ “death row” by commuting every existing Illinois death sentence to life imprisonment. The moratorium, continued by Ryan’s successors and still in effect, does not prevent the Illinois courts from sentencing a convict to death (and thus repopulating death row after 2003) but merely prevents the execution of the sentence. There were 158 persons under an Illinois death sentence in January of 2000 and 15 in July of 2010. Link.
