Why Appeals Courts Don’t Care If You’re Innocent

By John-Michael Kuczynski

People often assume that if someone is wrongfully convicted, the appeals process exists to set things right. That if the justice system fails the first time, a higher court will intervene to correct the error. But this is a misunderstanding—a dangerous one.

Appeals courts are not in the business of asking, "Was justice done?" They ask something else entirely: *"Were the rules followed?"

In almost all cases, when a conviction is appealed, the court is not evaluating whether the defendant is actually innocent. It is evaluating whether there was a procedural or legal error significant enough to merit reversal or retrial.

Did the judge misstate the law in jury instructions? Was inadmissible evidence improperly admitted? Did the prosecution violate a rule of discovery? Did the defense counsel fail so badly that it violated the Sixth Amendment?

These are the kinds of questions appeals courts care about. Questions like, "Did the defendant actually commit the crime?" are, astonishingly, beside the point.

There is a common phrase in appellate law:

“You don’t appeal the verdict. You appeal the trial.”

So even if new evidence comes to light—a confession, a videotape, DNA—that by itself is often not enough to win an appeal. Unless there is a clear procedural mechanism by which that new evidence can be introduced, it may be inadmissible, even if it proves innocence.

Yes, there are extraordinary procedures (habeas corpus, clemency petitions, post-conviction innocence claims), but these are rare, discretionary, and often face a high bar.

In essence, the legal system views the trial as a ritual, and the appellate process as a ritual audit. The concern is not with whether the defendant is in fact guilty or innocent, but whether the form of the process was maintained.

And that brings us back to the worldview of Justice Scalia, and by extension, to Rawlsian proceduralism: the belief that fairness in structure is enough—that if the system was followed, then justice has been done.

But this belief is not only wrong in theory. It is devastating in practice.

Because it means the innocent can rot in prison, and the courts will shrug and say, "Yes, but the paperwork was in order."

This is not justice. It’s bureaucratic theater. And the people trapped inside it have no exit unless the very system that condemned them decides, voluntarily, to open a door.

We shouldn’t pretend that this system exists to find the truth.

It doesn’t.