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The Michigan Supreme Court said Monday that a judge should not have moved ahead with a man's rape trial while an appeal of a pretrial ruling was pending before the high court, but the justices were split over whether the man deserved a new trial as a result.

Ronald Scott's appeal of an intermediate appellate court's ruling on the admissibility of certain witnesses' testimony should have resulted in a delay in his trial, the high court found. Scott was convicted of rape by a jury in 2016, while the appeal was pending.

The state justices concluded that Michigan's court rules required a stay of proceedings while the interlocutory ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals was appealed to the state supreme court.

A majority of the court said Scott should not automatically receive a new trial due to the error, however, concluding that the judge did not act without authority by holding the trial because interlocutory appeals, unlike final appeals, do not strip lower courts of jurisdiction over cases.

Justice Elizabeth T. Clement disagreed in a dissent joined by Justices Richard H. Bernstein and Kyra H. Bolden, writing that the majority was drawing "distinctions without meaningful differences" between interlocutory and final appeals in its ruling on subject-matter jurisdiction.

Scott had argued the trial court lacked authority to hold the trial because of his pending appeal of a Michigan Court of Appeals ruling that prosecutors could call two witnesses to testify Scott had raped them in a similar manner to the alleged victim, citing the case People v. Washington, in which the high court found a man's sentence void because the judge had no subject-matter jurisdiction to impose the sentence while an appeal of the final judgment remained unresolved at the state supreme court.

Scott filed his Michigan Supreme Court appeal of the witness-testimony ruling the day before his November 2016 trial was set to begin, but the judge proceeded with the trial, which resulted in Scott's conviction and sentencing, before the state high court decided whether to hear his appeal. The state justices eventually denied his petition.

The majority found Monday that the court rules require an automatic stay of lower court proceedings while an appeal of a judgment of the Court of Appeals is pending before the high court. A Court of Appeals judgment includes that court's decisions in interlocutory appeals, the justices said.

The automatic stay only prevents the court from acting on the specific issues on appeal, but in Scott's case, the trial should have been put on hold because it featured the disputed witness testimony, the state justices found.