Hello Readers,
This week I did more week on the case I talked about last week. Arizona Innocence Project is in the process of filing a brief, written by Collen Maring, trying to uphold the ruling they got from the Arizona Court of Appeals. My role is basically a fact-checker. I go through the trial transcript and other available documents and cite the quotes that Colleen wants to include. I also make sure that the things we are looking for actually exist and we can back them up. It’s important that we don’t distort facts or take them out of context, because unlike in trial law, we are limited in the documents we can use. If a fact cannot be found in the trial transcript, it doesn’t exist.
This can be a tedious task, because it requires a lot of flipping through papers, hoping I can find the part of the transcript that best supports Colleen’s argument. It can be very disappointing to find bad news (“That witness that seemed great? He actually doesn’t help us at all”). But it is also very rewarding to find good quotes and citations that strengthen the case. And, even though it’s disappointing to realize that an argument isn’t supported by the transcript, it’s important to find out early on, when we still have lots of time to edit the argument.
Another part of my role is to go through and find factual arguments that support our case that aren’t already included. I’ve only barely begun this process, but it’s very exciting for me, because contributing my own ideas and interpretations forces me to think about the case from a completely new perspective, and gives me a much deeper understanding of the case.
Next week I’ll be doing some work for a trial case and I hope to compare and contrast that process with the appellate process.
Hi! What is are the major differences between trail law and the type of law that the Arizona Innocence Project is practicing?
ReplyDeleteI hope this week's blog post will talk in-depth about this (I'll be talking about it from the defendant's point of view since that's who AIP works with). In trial law, you're building a case. You are charged with a crime or a civil suit is brought against you, and you lawyer builds your case to get you the ruling you desire. In an appellate case (like the ones handled by AIP), the case has already been built and the ruling has been made. You are trying to argue that the ruling made by the lower court was wrong or should be reconsidered, either because newly discovered evidence would have changed the case (I'll explain what counts as newly discovered evidence in the next post, since that's what happened in the case I'm working on), the governing law was used improperly, etc. The appellate court can then agree with trial court or change the ruling. Trial law is typically much more fact-based and deal with the who, what, where, why of the case. In appellate law, arguments are typically more law-based, because the facts of the case were already established in trial, and cannot be changed. There's a lot more that I hope to explain later, but these are the most major contrasts.
DeleteHi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteYou mention that you cannot admit new evidence in appellate cases, but it is okay to remove it? How does that work?