Today I'm gonna talk about the difference between state supreme court and state court of appeals appellate jurisdiction. So the Georgia constitution determines what cases go to the supreme court and what cases go to the court of appeals along with some enabling statutes. The real important thing to remember is in a direct appeal, which is the appeal you have right after you've been convicted at trial, murder cases go directly to the supreme court and all other cases end up going to the court of appeals. 

Now, there's a little wrinkle here. A case may go directly to the supreme court even if it's not a murder case if you're challenging the constitutionality of a statute or ordinance, but that's pretty uncommon. And so as a general rule, murder cases go to the supreme court, everything else goes to the court of appeals. 

This also includes, if the jury hung on a murder charge and you're appealing your convictions on other charges and the murder charge stays behind. You can get retried on it but because the jury didn't convict you, you're not appealing it. In those cases, they go to the supreme court too, even though the murder charge is not actually being appealed. And that's because, you could be retried for that murder and the case could end up back at the supreme court. 

For cases that go to the court of appeals, virtually any other type of case, type of criminal conviction except for a murder. The cases is argued in front of a panel of judges. And so the court of appeals is made up of a bunch of judges in three member panels. And what happens is, you get assigned to a panel just based on when your case is docketed and you argue to that panel. The panel reads the briefs, the panel makes a decision. If you don't like that decision then you can ask for the entire court of appeals to hear it. And that's called asking for the court to hear it on bonk. Now, sometimes they say yes, a lot of times they say no. If you don't like what happened at the court of appeals and either they heard it on bonk and they still denied you, or you don't wanna mess with asking the court to hear it on bonk because you don't think they're going to grant that motion. Then you can ask the supreme court to issue a writ of certiorari. And what that means is, you can ask for essentially the supreme court to tell the court of appeals, "Hey, send the case to us. We wanna review the work you just did." If the supreme court grants that petition, then you go to the state supreme court and you argue your case there. If they deny it, then that's it. That's the end of your direct appeal to state supreme court. 

I mean, in the state appellate court system, and it gets remanded back to the trial court. If we're talking about post-conviction relief in a habeas Corpus proceeding, then denials of habeas corpus in the trial level get appealed directly to the supreme court. But it's not an automatic appeal, you have to ask permission from the supreme court first. If they say yes, then you go, if they say no, then that's it.

So long story short, murder cases they're going to the supreme court. Most other cases are going to the court of appeals first maybe they'll go to the supreme court but most of them end at the court of appeals. And then that's the end of the direct appeal.