EVIDENTIARY ISSUES IN CRIMINAL APPEALS This res

This research paper discusses the evidentiary issues most commonly used in successful criminal appeals in American state and federal courts. It is dangerous to generalize on this subject because the record of proceedings below and the corresponding grounds for appeal vary from case to case. Also, empirical data as to what works and what does not is very sparse. The available data suggests that the odds against persons convicted of a crime prevailing on appeal are high. Those odds were somewhat reduced by the structural appellate court reforms which took place in the period 1940-1970 and the revolution in criminal procedure sparked by rulings of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren and later. However, more recently the pendulum has swung the other way due to rising crimes rates, hardening of public attitudes toward judges deemed 'soft on crime,' the emergence of a more conservative appellate judiciary and the overloaded dockets of many appellate courts during the past quarter century. Various types of evidentiary errors by the trial judge were a common ground for appeal and a leading but by no means predominant factor in successful outcomes. The harmless error rule is a major reason why erroneous evidentiary rulings have less impact than they otherwise would.

Criminal appeals in state courts date back to colonial times. However, it was not until 1879 that Congress authorized them in federal cases. No federal constitutio

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or reversal were about one in five (Marcote, 1990, September, p. 30). In federal courts, those odds had dropped by 1999 to one in seven (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001, April). According to Conlen (1996, November) "only about one in 25 criminal appeals [in California] results in a reversal" (p. 31). Why? The number of criminal appeals continues to rise and more and more conduct, such as drug use and various sex crimes, has been criminalized and/or prosecuted. Hanson & Chapper (1989, December-January) said "the rate of increase in appeals exceed those of crimes, arrests, and trials," due in large part to decisions holding that indigents have the right to appeal at state expense (p. 239). The rate of reversals has, however, diminished due to the use of various procedures for screening out non-meritorious appeals, the reaction of appellate judges to public criticism and the conservative drift of Supreme Court rulings in the areas of criminal procedure and states/rights. Promising Evidentiary Avenues of Appeal Evidentiary rulings by the trial court are only one of many possible bases for appeal. Others include defective prosecutorial pleading, insufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, misconduct by prosecutors, ju
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Chapper Hanson, According Rossman, Purver Lawrence, Earl Warren, CRIMINAL APPEALS, Purver Taylor, Appeal Evidentiary, Hanson Chapper, Jones Barnes, Davidow Wright, criminal appeals, appellate courts, evidentiary rulings, criminal procedure, supreme court, trial judge, criminal convictions, rulings trial, chapper hanson, law review, erroneous evidentiary rulings, harmless error rule, justice 2001 april, marcote 1990 september, conlen 1996 november,
Approximate Word count = 1388
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)