Controvery?? In the Cobb County sticker case.

[Worldtraveller]

Thanks to Red State Rabble (http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com) for the heads up.

Apparently, the Cobb county school board appealed the decision to remove the stickers from thier biology books. According to this article (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1135937114289&rss=newswire), the appeals court judges seem to be focused on the timeline of a petition that was circulated by a member of the community that was trying to get creationism/ID taught in the schools.

Can one of our legal experts explain to me what's going on? It seems like the judges on the appeals panel are focusing on a minor detail, while ignoring the overall importance of the case. Or maybe that's just the impression I get from that article.

There's a reason I didn't go into law....it makes my head hurt.

Cheers,
Lane

[espritch]

I'm not a legal expert, but my understanding is that the whole point of an appeal is to have the case re-examined based on issues not addressed in the original court proceeding. The original court decision would presumably have resolved all the issues brought up during that trial. So any appeal would have to be based on issues not considered in the original trial.

Having the judge in the appeal focus on a minor issue not addressed in the original trial makes sense. Of course, if the court decides the issue has merit, they would still have to consider whether it outweighs the issues from the original trail in deciding whether the verdict from the original trial should be overturned.

[Sparrow]

I'm not a legal expert either, but my understanding is that appellate courts, including supreme courts (US and state) are restricted to examining and potentially correcting errors of the proceeding (trial) of the lower court. That is, whether the court improperly applied or ignored some facet of law, allowed irrelevant evidence or disallowed relevant evidence or made some improper decision of procedure (objections, etc.). If new testimony is needed, the appellate court will usually send it back to the court where it came from.

In the Cobb case, the actions of the school board appeared to have been taken to respond to a looming petition from some creationist parents, thus introducing a religious motive that was deemed by the trial court to be unconstitutional. The questioning by the appellate judges seemed to focus on the timing of the petition. This questioning appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the facts. The petition, as I recall, was presented to the board after the board's decision. The judge seemed to think that the board was unaware of the movement behind the petition until then. That the board was aware is amply demonstrated not only by the newspaper accounts, but the petitioners themselves.

[RBH]

Sparrow wroteI'm not a legal expert either, but my understanding is that appellate courts, including supreme courts (US and state) are restricted to examining and potentially correcting errors of the proceeding (trial) of the lower court. That is, whether the court improperly applied or ignored some facet of law, allowed irrelevant evidence or disallowed relevant evidence or made some improper decision of procedure (objections, etc.). If new testimony is needed, the appellate court will usually send it back to the court where it came from.I think that's correct. An appeals court does not "re-try" the case. Rather, it examines the procedings to ensure that they were properly executed, and examines the trial court's application of the relevant law to acertain whether it corresponds to constitutional requirements, statutory requirements, and court precedent -- i.e., that the law was appropriately applied given the facts ascertained in the original trial proceeding.

Appeals courts do not typically examine new facts -- the lower court's findings of fact are almost always taken to be correct, and if new evidence is adduced, as Sparrow says, the case is sent back to the lower court for re-adjudication.

RBH