¶ … court process for the below mentioned case would be either litigation by judge or by jury. The facets that we are looking at include the actions of Mr. Smith and if these actions actually deserve the sentence that he received. The process would entail Mr. Smith filing a complaint. In the decision of whether or not this is a criminal or civil matter depends solely amongst the facts. In the facts provided below the court that Mr. Smith was sentenced in there is no reason for him to have been tried on a civil level considering no one was hurt. From the view of Smith -- he questions whether or not the penalties upon him were too harsh or not. Given the fact that he did come forward, to tell what had happened. A problem is that he is faced with the prosecution stating that the only reason he came forward was because of being subpoenaed for an earlier matter with the same company. The process in this matter is to appeal the process, because he wants the process to be reviewed and changed. How this all fits into the court system is through what is called the trial court level. The level he was sentenced on is called trial court; he has to go to the next level, which will be the court of appeals, after that it can be heard by the Supreme Court by arguing constitutional violations. And even though a person may appeal to the Supreme Court there is no guarantee that the case will be heard by them. When a person appeals they are not making a criminal case. In this case Smith's appeal is a civil process. It is being appealed from the criminal docket. A civil case is one that includes malicious persecution because they are saying that Smith has been prosecuted excessively. In this matter he may believe he is being wrongfully prosecuted considering he did come forward to tell the wrongful acts that were taking place. If this were civil Smith would be saying that the sentence was too harsh considering without him this information may have never come forward. A recap of this case is the court process being used is criminal prosecution, what will be used if he appeals is civil, which would mean that Smith felt his sentence was too severe.