Legal Question in Appeals and Writs in California

Re: Role of Appellate Courts

The appellate courts' primary role is to review the decisions of trial courts to see whether those courts committed the kind of error that would deprive a defendant of a fair trial. Minor errors that do not affect the outcome are of little concern to these courts; what matters are errors of such a nature that they call into question the result of the trial court proceedings.

Where it finds such errors, the appellate court will typically reverse the decision of the trial court, in whole or in part (it might throw out a sentence, for example, or reverse one conviction among several), and send the case back for further proceedings.

Appellate courts do not re-weigh the evidence or decide whether they agree with the decision of the jury (or the trial judge if there was no jury). They are concerned with whether the defendant had a fair trial, and will only rarely question the result where the procedure itself was fair. The few exceptions to this rule are generally cases where the laws at issue are themselves subject to challenge.

Appellate courts also consider petitions for writs of habeas corpus and other petitions for extraordinary relief, including those challenging pre-trial decisions of the trial courts. These are important functions, but they are a much smaller part of the courts' workload than those outlined above.

Additionally, the Supreme Court (both the U.S. Supreme Court and the various states' high courts) are concerned with ensuring that there is a uniform body of coherent law to guide defendants, prosecutors and lower courts in future cases. Unlike intermediate appellate courts, the Supreme Court's job is not to correct errors but rather to establish the meaning of the law.

Re: Role of Appellate Courts

The role of the appellate court is the same in the civil and criminal justice systems -- to allow a party to remedy an error of law by the lower court.