Weisberg Law Blog

Supreme Court of Virginia

On April 1, I appeared before the Supreme Court of Virginia. The hearing was before a three Judge "Writ Panel”… I must explain. The Supreme Court of Virginia does not hear every case presented to them; rather, the Court only hears cases selected by them, and they select those cases which are deemed worthy of consideration by the Court.
What happens is that the aggrieved party (the Appellant) files a Petition for Appeal with the Court. The other side (the Appellee) can then respond in writing. After that, and assuming that the Appellant has done everything right (a big assumption in view of the various hurdles and deadlines), the Court schedules this hearing before a Writ Panel.
The Appellant is the only party heard from at these hearings. No testimony is heard. The Appellant gets 10 min. to have his say. The three Judges may ask questions, but sometimes they don't. In my case, none of the Judges had any questions for me. I merely said what I said.
My client was present along with me, although he was not to be heard. Usually, the parties are not present. No decision is made at the hearing; within 30 days the Court will respond in writing.
Each year, the Court gets about 3,000 Petitions but can only hear as many as 50 cases, so the odds are against getting the Court to accept your case (about 2%, one in 50). The odds before the Supreme Court of the United States are even worse. Some years back I filed a Petition with the Supreme Court of the United States in a criminal case. It was a very interesting case and I thought that I had a chance of getting the Court to accept the case. Well, no dice. It was in October, they still had about 2,000 appeals, and decided not to accept any case (0 for 2,000).
What all this means is that you had better win your case at trial because appeal is truly the "hail mary pass."

Labels: appeal criminal appeal supreme court supreme court appeal