By John Grimm

A recent decision by the Supreme Court of Maryland confirmed that when a circuit court exercising appellate jurisdiction over the District Court revokes a defendant’s probation, further review is available only in the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari. This holding, in Zimmerman v. State, Sept. Term 2024, No. 19,[1] is no surprise—it results from a very straightforward statutory reading—but the opinion by Justice Killough offers an interesting examination of the basic jurisdictional principles at play when the circuit court enters an order in its appellate capacity.

Circuit court appeals of District Court criminal matters are a procedural oddity (which you can read about in more detail in a post I wrote back in 2016[2]). Unlike the more familiar appellate model—where a court of appeals reviews a trial court decision on a fixed record—District Court appeals occur in the circuit court,[3] and, in criminal cases, take the form of a de novo trial.[4] These de novo trials look and operate exactly like any other trial in circuit court; if you observed one, you would never know that it was an “appeal” unless you were familiar with its procedural history. But a District Court appeal is still an appeal, which affects what kind of subsequent review is available. Ordinarily, the Appellate Court of Maryland has jurisdiction over final judgments of the circuit court.[5] But there is no right to Appellate Court review “from a final judgment of a [circuit] court entered or made in the exercise of appellate jurisdiction in reviewing the decision of the district court . . . .”[6] This leaves certiorari in the Maryland Supreme Court as the only option for review of a circuit court’s judgment in a District Court criminal appeal.[7]