- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Federal appellate courts do not have appellate jurisdiction over state trial courts.Any, and I mean any, question on the constitutionality of a court proceeding can be immediately filed in the Federal Appellate Court that has jurisdiction, and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court because the US Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is constitutional, and what is not; given this was a criminal prosecution with penalties that resulted in incarceration it is more likely SCOTUS would grant certiorari than not (also he's black).
There's an extremely rare writ a federal court can issue against state entities like courts. It would be under the All Writs Act and in the nature of a writ of prohibition, prohibiting the lower court from proceeding. This almost never actually happens. There's also federal removal. However, the doctrine of Younger abstention forbids federal courts from interfering in state criminal proceedings except under a vanishingly small set of circumstances.You are confusing the appeals process of a trial court's ruling with a writ of habeas corpus which prisoners can fall back on after all their appeals have been exhausted when a violation of the US Constitution is alleged.