Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Misdemeanor Appeals since the abolition of Municipal Courts in California

If you wish to appeal a misdemeanor conviction, have it reduced to an infraction or have it expunged, the change in the name of the court will not hinder it. Call me directly at (619) 222-3504.

Re: Misdemeanor Appeals since the abolition of Municipal Courts in California

What used to be two court systems have been combined into one, but this was done primarily to save on administrative costs and to make the distribution of caseloads among judges more even. (In some counties, the judges of one court had substantially higher workloads than those of the other court.)

How the courts are administered has changed, but what they do has not. Minor offenses are still tried under the rules which used to govern municipal courts, while major offenses are tried under the superior court rules.

On the civil side there is an analogous process. The superior courts still have limited jurisdiction civil cases, which can seek no more than $25,000 and which formerly would have gone to the municipal court. They also have unlimited jurisdiction cases, which are the ones that formerly would have gone to the superior court.

In all but the most sparsely populated counties, some judges handle only the minor crimes and others the major crimes. There are also some judges who hear limited jurisdiction cases while others handle the unlimited cases.

When a defendant wants to appeal from a case which was handled under the old municipal court rules, he appeals to the appellate department of the superior court. Although this branch is part of the same court whose decisions it is reviewing, it has the authority to reverse the decisions it reviews, and the judges who have been reversed must honor those decisions.

If the appellate department were converted into a separate court the process would look different but it would still work the same way. However, there would be additional administrative costs and the superior courts would have less leeway to distribute the workload evenly. These, of course, are the same problems which led to consolidation in the first place. A state which recently combined two courts in order to address these problems is unlikely to split an existing court and thereby re-create them.