An appeal is a request made to a higher court to review the decision of a lower court. The Appellant usually seeks to change the outcome of the lower court proceeding (substituting a different verdict or result), or to secure an order that the proceeding be re-done (an order for a new trial to be held).

The majority of criminal trials in Ontario proceed entirely before the Ontario Court of Justice. Appeals from those decisions are generally to the Superior Court of Justice by way of ‘summary conviction appeal’.

The most serious criminal cases usually start in the Ontario Court of Justice but proceed to trial at the Superior Court of Justice (although they can be dealt with entirely in the lower court in some circumstances). On appeal, these ‘indictable’ proceedings would be reviewed at the court of Appeal for Ontario, the highest court in the province. Any appeals from that court go to the Supreme Court of Canada.

I emphasize that all persons should have counsel at all stages of the criminal process, ideally from the very outset of any matter. For appeals this is even more imperative. While there are some notable exceptions, perhaps ‘exceptions that prove the rule’, it is difficult to see how an unrepresented person with no legal training could secure a successful result through the appeal process.

While the presumption of an accused person’s innocence is supposed to predominate the trial phase, a presumption of regularity predominates the appeal phase. In other words, appeal courts presume that what has been done ‘below’ was proper and just and are very reluctant to interfere in the absence of clearly demonstrated legal errors or miscarriages of justice.

My Articles of Clerkship were served at the Crown Law Office – Criminal, the office of the Attorney General that handles virtually all serious criminal appeals in Ontario. I was thus fortunate to be involved in numerous appeals before the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada. Building on that, I have maintained an appellate as well as a trial practice. Indeed, with the continuing development of academically oriented Charter litigation at the trial level, and increasingly strict Rules of Court requiring drafting and filing of written materials in most if not all applications for pre-trial relief, there is increasingly less distinction between the demands of serious trial and appellate practices respectively.