Second Department New York Criminal Appeals Lawyer
The Appellate Division, Second Department is located at 45 Monroe Place in Brooklyn. It has jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases emanating from the superior courts located in the counties of Dutchess, Brooklyn, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Staten Island, Rockland Suffolk, and Westchester.
The Appellate Division is a middle level appellate court in New York State. It is administratively divided into four departments, called the First Department, Second Department, Third Department and Fourth Department. Each department is responsible for hearing appeals from a specific geographic area of New York State, which contains a number of New York counties. Because the Appellate Division is an intermediate appellate court, many of the appeals that are heard by this court are as of right. That means that the person bringing the appeal has the right to bring that case to the Appellate Division to have the appellate court review the proceedings from the lower court.
The Appellate Division, Second Department hears appeals coming from all the superior level trial courts in Dutchess, Brooklyn, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Staten Island, Rockland Suffolk, and Westchester. Thus, all cases appealed from the Supreme Court (criminal term and civil term) as well as the Family Court, Surrogate’s Court, and the Court of Claims are appealed, as of right, to the Appellate Division, Second Department. The responsibility of the Appellate Division judges is to review the proceedings in the courts below and to make sure that the judges, lawyers, and jurors followed the statutory, constitutional and common law. This will often include both the substantive and procedural aspects of the law.
The Appellate Division, First Department has a total of 21 judges, including a presiding judge (this is subject to change). Each case that appeals to the Second Department is randomly assigned a panel of four judges that will read the briefs submitted by the lawyers as well as the record from the court below. Most often, the five-judge panel will hear oral argument on the briefs, whereby the attorneys appear before the four-judge panel at 45 Monroe Place in Brooklyn to answer questions that the judges might have concerning that case.
The Appellate Division, Second Department is known as a “hot bench”. This means that the judges are always very well prepared to hear each case and have read the attorneys’ briefs thoroughly and are intimately familiar with the record from the court below and the legal issues pertaining to each case. They will have lots of tough questions, so the attorneys must be well prepared at oral argument to answer all types of questions, including procedural, jurisdictional, substantive and constitutional law questions as well as hypothetical questions. Oral argument in the Second Department is challenging to say the least; any attorney appearing before this Court must prepare in earnest weeks, often months, in advance. The objective at oral argument is not only to meet the challenging inquiry posed by a four-judge panel, but also to successfully advocate for one’s client and to persuade the court of your client’s position.
The principal means of communicating/persuading the Appellate Division, Second Department judges is through the appellate brief. The brief is the primary legal document submitted to the Second Department that thoroughly discusses the legal issues raised by the appellant (the individual appealing the case) and answered by the respondent (the individual answering the appellant’s brief). In the Appellate Division, Second Department the parties must submit multiple hard copies of the briefs, the record from the court below, as well as electronic copies of the brief. The Second Department requires that the citations in the brief be hyper-linked to the source being cited, whether it is case law or statutory law. As previously stated the Second Department is a “hot bench”, so the hard copy and electronic briefs must be prepared with great care and attention, keeping in mind that the objective of the appellate brief is not only to inform the judges on the law, but also to persuade them of your client’s position.
Writing appellate briefs to the Appellate Division, Second Department and appearing before this Court for oral argument is challenging, even for the most experienced of lawyers. Before embarking on an appeal, you should consider hiring an experienced appellate attorney.