What Actually Happens at an Appeal Hearing (It's Not a Retrial)

On September 21, 2026, three judges of the Indiana Court of Appeals will hear argument in the most-watched appeal in true crime — Richard Allen's challenge to his Delphi convictions. Thousands of people will tune into the webcast expecting something like a trial.

They'll see something very different: one hour, two lawyers, no witnesses, no exhibits, and judges who interrupt constantly. If you don't know what you're looking at, it's baffling. Here's the machine underneath it.

An appeal reviews the trial — it doesn't redo it

The single most important thing to understand: appellate courts don't decide whether the defendant did it. They decide whether the trial that convicted them was legally sound.

A jury answers "guilty or not guilty." An appeals court answers "was the process lawful?"

That means no new evidence, no re-interviewing witnesses, no fresh forensics. The court works from the trial record — transcripts, exhibits, and rulings — plus the parties' written briefs. If a piece of evidence never made it into the trial record, for appellate purposes it effectively doesn't exist.

The briefs are the real battlefield

Months before anyone stands at a podium, the case is fought on paper:

• The appellant (the convicted person) files an opening brief identifying specific legal errors — evidence that should have been suppressed, testimony that shouldn't have been admitted, a defense that was wrongly excluded.
• The state answers, arguing the rulings were correct — or that any error was harmless, meaning it didn't change the outcome.
• The appellant gets a short reply.

By argument day, the judges have read everything and usually have a working view of the case. Oral argument isn't a presentation; it's a stress test.

What the hearing actually looks like

Each side typically gets 20 to 30 minutes — in Allen's case, 30 per side. The lawyer barely gets a sentence out before the questions start, and that's by design. Judges use the time to probe exactly the points that trouble them:

• "If we agree the warrant was defective, what's the remedy — suppression, or a new trial?"
• "Wasn't this objection waived when trial counsel didn't raise it?"
• "Even without the confessions, isn't the remaining evidence sufficient?"

Reading the questions is the spectator sport, but be careful: a judge who hammers one side may be testing the argument they agree with, making sure it survives pressure. Court watchers get this wrong constantly.

What you won't see: a decision

The panel takes the case under advisement and issues a written opinion later — typically weeks to months. The possible outcomes:

• Affirm — the conviction stands. The most common result by far.
• Reverse — a ruling was wrong and it mattered. This usually means a new trial, often without the tainted evidence, not an open cell door.
• Remand — the case goes back to the lower court with instructions on a specific issue.
• Losing doesn't end it: the loser can seek transfer to the state supreme court — which, like Mackenzie Shirilla's pending request to the Ohio Supreme Court, is discretionary. The high court takes only a fraction of the cases asked of it. A direct appeal is a right; everything after is a request.

Why the deck is stacked toward affirmance

Two doctrines do most of the work:

• Preservation. An appellate court generally reviews only errors the defense objected to at the time. Miss the objection, and the issue is reviewed under a far harsher standard — or not at all.
• Harmless error. Even a genuine mistake won't reverse a conviction if the court concludes the verdict would have been the same without it. The stronger the remaining evidence, the more "harmless" an error becomes.

That's why the national reversal rate for criminal appeals sits in the single digits — and why an appeal built on suppression issues, like Allen's challenge to the search of his home and his prison statements, aims at the foundations of the state's case rather than its details.

The bottom line

An appeal hearing is an hour of judges pressure-testing arguments they've already read, followed by months of silence and a written ruling. No verdict is announced, no evidence is presented, and "reversed" usually means "tried again," not "released." Keep that frame and dates like September 21 — tracked with every other major hearing in our court dates tracker — become much easier to watch intelligently.