Denver criminal lawyer / the role of the Supreme Court

On the Denver criminal defense lawyer blog, I've been talking quite a bit about appeals. As you may have noticed, a lot of appeals end up with a failed petition to the Colorado Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. In most cases, the Supreme Court won't even hear the case. So what's it even for?

Basically the Supreme Court is more of a political institution than a court. Although the common law evolved out of hundreds of cases being heard, decided and recorded, and the Supreme Court is in the mold of a common law court, the number of cases in the entire United States makes it impossible for them to hear even a fraction of them. So they basically just pick the politically important ones--ones where the court wants to change the law in some significant way and where the facts fit their idea of a good case to change course. In fact, if you do get heard by the U.S. Supreme Court after losing at the circuit or State Supreme Court level, there's a good chance you'll win: a known saying among Denver criminal defense lawyers is that the Supreme Court hears cases to overturn them, not to affirm.

However the fraction of cases, and specifically the fraction of criminal law cases, pales to the number of cases in the United States. There are hundreds of thousands of criminal cases in U.S. state and federal courts. The Supreme Court only hears a little over one hundred each year. Of those, many are from maritime law (over which the Supreme Court has significant jurisdiction). Others are cases where states are suing other states, federal civil cases, and cases where an executive officer is charged. That means probably less than 20 criminal cases make it all the way to Washington each year. And some of those are federal! So the chances of a regular old Denver criminal defense lawyer and his client getting a day in front of the nation's high court are pretty much nothing. Because the Supreme Court is a political body and really hears cases to help in governing the country and interpreting the constitution, not to correct errors in state courts.