MINISTERIAL COURT OF APPEALS.
1. Each Annual Conference shall elect every two years beginning with its
first session after the General Conference, three Elders, who shall be
men of experience, judgment and information touching the law of the
Church, to be known as Triers of Appeals.
2. The Ministerial Court of Appeals shall consist of a President, who
shall be a Bishop, and the Triers of Appeals from three Conferences
adjacent to that of which the appellant was a member.
3. The President of the Ministerial Court shall be appointed by the
House of Bishops; but in no case shall they appoint the Bishop who
presided in the Annual Conference which tried the appellant.
4. Should any member of the Ministerial Court of Appeals, become an
appellant to the Court of Appeals, he shall be disqualified to sit as a
member of the said Court; his place declared vacant and another
appointed in his stead.
5. Any member of any Annual Conference who has been tried and convicted
shall have the right to appeal to the Ministerial Court; =provided=, he
signifies to the Bishop of the Conference, his intention so to do within
two months after the action of the Annual Conference.
6. The Secretary of the Annual Conference shall carefully preserve the
record of the proceedings of the trial, all charges and specifications
and documents relating thereto, and shall forward the same to the
President of the Ministerial Court of Appeals as soon as he has been
appointed.
7. The right of peremptory challenge shall not be denied an appellant,
=provided=, the exercise of such challenge does not reduce the members
of the Court below five, which number shall constitute a quorum.
8. The Ministerial Court of Appeals shall elect a Secretary from its own
members to keep a record of its proceedings. In all cases the
proceedings and findings of the Court shall be subject to review by the
General Conference.
9. The appellant or his representative shall state the grounds of his
appeal, and the representative of the lower court shall then be heard.
The charges and specifications and all documents bearing on the case,
together with the minutes of the lower Court, shall be read. The
appellant is then heard in his defense and reply is made by the
representative of the lower Court. When the representatives of the
appellant and the Court below have been heard, they retire and the Court
of Appeals deliberates and decides the case.