A criminal appeal attorney explains the process

If a defendant is convicted he may appeal his conviction by filing a Motion for Post-Conviction Relief with the trial court, or by filing an appeal directly with the Court of Appeals.  The conviction will be either reversed or upheld.

When a conviction is reversed, a new trial will be held unless the State decides not to proceed.  When a conviction is upheld, the defendant may try to get the Supreme Court to review the case.  Supreme Court review of the case is not an automatic right.  The Supreme Court decides which cases will be heard, and only accepts a small percentage of cases.

The purpose of the Court of Appeals is to correct errors made by the trial court.  The Supreme Court focuses mainly on constitution issues that will have a broad impact on cases across the State.  The Supreme Court will not review for errors made during the trial court unless those errors rise to a level that caused a fundamentally unfair trial.