Stage #6 — Appeal

Stage #6 — Appeal

If you lose your case, you have the right to appeal, provided you file the notice within 30 days.  Appeals are complicated and largely dissatisfying, for a couple of reasons.

Definition:  “Appeal” – When a court gives you a verdict (final decision) that you do not like, you can appeal, which means going to a higher court and asking them to change the lower court’s decision.  There are a lot of rules governing exactly how appeals work.  In Santa Clara County, all traffic appeals go to a Judge in San Jose.  The appealing party must file a written memo, outlining her/his argument, and then gets a chance to argue their case in person.  Then, the Judge decides whether the lower court made a mistake.

First, you can only review legal errors on appeal.  The officer will not come to court for the appeal, and you will not be allowed to introduce any new evidence.  The only two questions on appeal are: (1) whether the trial court did everything right; and (2) if not, whether the error changed the outcome.  It is up to the defendant to prove, using only the information that was available to the trial court, that the Commissioner made a mistake and that you would have been found not guilty if the mistake had not been made.  This sounds simple, but is actually quite complex and difficult to achieve.

Second, the Judge in the court of appeals will defer to the Commissioner.  This means that if there is any ambiguity – in other words, we are not sure what the Commissioner meant, or exactly what he did – the Judge will interpret everything in the light most favorable to the Commissioner’s decision.  Any time there are two possible interpretations, the Judge will choose the one that supports the guilty verdict.

Appeals are not impossible to win, though.  Commissioner do make mistakes, and sometimes the appeals Judge can be persuaded to take note of the mistake and reverse the decision.  It is rare, but it happens.