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.

"While an automatic stay does not necessarily prevent a court from commencing trial when an interlocutory appeal is pending and the question on review is collateral to the trial, the trial court here abused its discretion because the trial included the very evidence that was the subject of the application pending before this court," Justice Brian K. Zahra wrote for the majority.

The justices concluded, however, that interlocutory appeals are not "on par" with appeals from final judgments and do not divest trial judges of their jurisdiction over cases the way final appeals do.

As a result, the majority said the trial judge in Scott's case did not conduct a trial without authority to do so, so Scott's conviction and sentence is not automatically void but rather reviewed as a procedural error.

The high court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals to determine whether the witness testimony should have been admitted at trial and if it unfairly skewed the proceedings.

Justice Clement said in her dissent that she would have applied the Washington case to find the trial judge did not have jurisdiction over the aspects of the case involved in Scott's high court appeal, so the judge had no authority to hold the trial with the contested testimony.

As a result, Scott's trial, conviction and sentence are void, the dissenting justice argued.

Allowing the trial to go forward while an appeal was pending before the Michigan Supreme Court "risked necessitating a retrial should our Court have granted leave to appeal and ruled that the evidence should not be admitted," Justice Clement added.

Justice Clement said that it would be logical and promote judicial efficiency to apply a general rule that lower courts "lose subject-matter jurisdiction over a case while an appeal pends — whether that appeal is interlocutory or final."

The parties did not immediately reply to requests for comment Monday.

The state was represented by Joshua D. Abbott of the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office.

Scott was represented by Garrett Burton and Katherine Marcuz of the State Appellate Defender's Office.

The case is People of Michigan v. Ronald Scott, case number 164790, in the Michigan Supreme Court.