United States appellate procedure involves the rules and regulations for filing appeals in state courts and federal courts. The nature of an appeal can vary greatly depending on the type of case and the rules of the court in the jurisdiction where the case was prosecuted. There are many types of standard of review for appeals, such as de novo and abuse of discretion. However, most appeals begin when a party files a petition for review to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that a prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so—may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The Court ruled that this practice violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case gave rise to the term Batson challenge, an objection to a peremptory challenge based on the standard established by the Supreme Court's decision in this case. Subsequent jurisprudence has resulted in the extension of Batson to civil cases and cases where jurors are excluded on the basis of sex.
United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 1943 term.
Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198 (2006), is a US Supreme Court case involving the one-year statute of limitations for filing habeas corpus petitions that was established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). In a 5–4 decision, the Court ruled that if the government unintentionally failed to object to the filing of a petition after the AEDPA limitations period has expired, it is not an abuse of discretion for a district court to dismiss sua sponte the petition on that basis.
Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the standard for when a federal court can grant habeas corpus relief to overturn a criminal conviction based on the state court's misapplication of established federal law. At issue was whether a criminal defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial was violated when relatives of the alleged victim were permitted to sit in the courtroom as spectators during the trial, wearing buttons that displayed the victim's image.
Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314 (1987), is a case decided by the United States Supreme Court.
Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U.S. 406 (2007), was a United States Supreme Court case about the application of the Confrontation Clause and whether Crawford v. Washington (2006) applied retroactively. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that Crawford did not apply retroactively.
Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that state juries may convict a defendant by a less-than-unanimous verdict in a felony criminal case. The four-justice plurality opinion of the court, written by Justice White, affirmed the judgment of the Oregon Court of Appeals and held that there was no constitutional right to a unanimous verdict. Although federal law requires federal juries to reach criminal verdicts unanimously, the Court held Oregon's practice did not violate the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury and so allowed it to continue. In Johnson v. Louisiana, a case decided on the same day, the Court held that Louisiana's similar practice of allowing criminal convictions by a jury vote of 9–3 did not violate due process or equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a New York state law making it a crime "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]" was, in part, unconstitutional because it prohibited speech against the flag. The Court left for a later day the question of whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional to prohibit, without reference to the utterance of words, the burning of the flag.
Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226 (1964), provided an opportunity for the Supreme Court of the United States to determine whether racial discrimination in the provision of public accommodations by a privately owned restaurant violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, due to a supervening change in the state law, the Court vacated the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals and remanded the case to allow that court to determine whether the convictions for criminal trespass of twelve African American students should be dismissed.
Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293 (1967), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that a pretrial identification not covered by the Sixth Amendment right to counsel should be excluded if it was so unnecessarily suggestive as to violate due process.
North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711 (1969), is a United States Supreme Court case that forbids judicial “vindictiveness” from playing a role in the increased sentence a defendant receives after a new trial. In sum, due process requires that a defendant be “free of apprehension” of judicial vindictiveness. Time served for a new conviction of the same offense must be “fully credited,” and a trial judge seeking to impose a greater sentence on retrial must affirmatively state the reasons for imposing such a sentence.
Chaidez v. United States, 568 U.S. 342 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that the ruling in Padilla v. Commonwealth of Kentucky could not be applied retroactively, because the Padilla case applied a new rule to the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Padilla v. Kentucky held that the Sixth Amendment made it mandatory for criminal defense attorneys to advise non-citizen clients about the deportation risks of a guilty plea. While Padilla v. Kentucky was a case related to immigration and deportation, Justice Scalia worried that there was "no logical stopping point" to how Padilla v. Commonwealth of Kentucky can be applied. Justice Scalia wondered if the same logic could be extended and applied to numerous other cases, and felt it would be impossible for attorneys to make sure any client was informed of all the potential legal consequences post trial.
Gundy v. United States, No. 17-6086, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that 42 U.S.C. § 16913(d), part of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA"), does not violate the nondelegation doctrine. The section of the SORNA allows the Attorney General to "specify the applicability" of the mandatory registration requirements of "sex offenders convicted before the enactment of [SORNA]". Precedent is that it is only constitutional for Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch if it provides an "intelligible principle" as guidance. The outcome of the case could have greatly influenced the broad delegations of power Congress has made to the federal executive branch, but it did not.
Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 738 (2019), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the presumption of prejudice for Sixth Amendment purposes applies regardless of whether a defendant has waived the right to appeal.
Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that guilty verdicts be unanimous in trials for serious crimes. Only cases in Oregon and Louisiana were affected by the ruling because every other state already had this requirement. The decision incorporated the Sixth Amendment requirement for unanimous jury criminal convictions against the states, and thereby overturned the Court's previous decision from the 1972 cases Apodaca v. Oregon and Johnson v. Louisiana.
Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Court's prior decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), which had ruled that jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Ramos did not apply retroactively to earlier cases prior to their verdict in Ramos.
Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656 (2001) is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the rule established under Cage v. Louisiana (1990), where the Court held certain jury instructions unconstitutional because the words used did not suggest the degree of proof required by the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, was not "made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court." Tyler is the primary case regarding the retroactivity of new rules to successive habeas petitions.
Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986), was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the relationship of the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to other constitutional rights in criminal procedure. In this case, evidence against the defendant was probably seized illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment, but he lost the chance to argue that point due to his lawyer's ineffectiveness. The prosecution argued that the defendant's attempt to make a Sixth Amendment argument via a habeas corpus petition was really a way to sneak his Fourth Amendment argument in through the back door. The Court unanimously disagreed, and held that the Fourth Amendment issue and the Sixth Amendment issue represented different constitutional values, and had different requirements for prevailing in court, and therefore were to be treated separately by rules of procedure. Therefore, the habeas corpus petition could go forward. In its opinion, the Court also gave guidance on how to apply its decisions in Stone v. Powell and Strickland v. Washington.
Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356 (1972), was a court case in the U.S. Supreme Court involving the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana law that allowed less-than unanimous jury verdicts to convict persons charged with a felony, does not violate the Due Process clause. This case was argued on a similar basis as Apodaca v. Oregon.
