Court of Appeals

This morning I went to the Court of Appeals. It is located down town (it’s in the building we had prom in). I shadowed a lawyer named, John Martin. He was doing an oral argument. Basically, the Court of Appeals is the next step up from the Court of Common Pleas. In this case, John was trying to argue for a new sentencing because the defendant during trial had not been read the guidelines for post release control (probation). However, a new case had already been ruled on earlier in a higher court that may have overturned the need to do a new sentencing if the defendant was not read the guidelines of his post release control during sentencing. John forgot to update the Court of Appeals with another brief in light of the other case that would have amended his argument. Thus, when he got in front of the Judges (there are three), they chastised him for not updating his argument / brief in light of the other case that had been ruled on in a higher court that changed the direction of his argument. So, that was quite awkward as this lawyer was getting reprimanded in front of me. He did have a strong argument despite the other ruling in the other case for at least the guy getting read or updated about his rights to post release control. However, because of his mistake in not updating / giving a supplement to his original brief the Judges basically threw out his argument.

One of the other cases I saw this morning at the Court of Appeals was one about breaking and entering versus burglary. In trial, the defendant was accused of committing a burglary. However, in the Court of Appeals the Appellate was stating that because the house was “vacant” for 25 months, and was thus not a place that constituted a maintained residence it was not a burglary, but merely breaking and entering. The State was saying that because the basic features of the house were intact and the gas, water, and lightening was being paid for by an outside company it constituted a maintained residence. The rebuttal to this by the Appellate was that paying for mere services is not maintaining the residence. He stated the guy who was breaking and entering the house was the one maintaining it not the company. There was a bunch of cases that backed up each respective side. Each person was basically interpreting the law in a different matter. As one of the Judges said they both had strong cases and appealing points of view. So, I’m not exactly sure what the Judges are going to decide in that matter.

The Court of Appeals was very cool because there was much more attention to the actual law. It was also interesting to see how three Judges worked together and listened to the cases. I’m normally used to seeing only one Judge up on the bench. It was also a lot more formal. I also found it interesting that each Case can only take 15 minutes. That forces the lawyers to make their arguments brief and to the point even though they must use a lot of case law to back up their points. I enjoyed viewing another branch of the Judicial System.