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In the past two weeks, we’ve reviewed the geographical sources of the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets between 2005 and 2009.  Today, we address the automatic appeal death penalty docket.

Los Angeles county accounted for more than half of the automatic appeal death penalty docket in 2005 – 13 of 25 cases.  In the remaining four years, Los Angeles’ share of the docket was at least a bit more modest – five cases in 2006, six in 2007, nine in 2008 and five in 2009.  Alameda County, the seventh biggest county in terms of population, was next, accounting for eleven death penalty appeals.  Orange County, the second biggest county in terms of population, was next, producing ten death penalty appeals.  The fourth biggest county in the state – Riverside – was next, accounting for eight automatic death penalty appeals.  The second and fifth most populous counties, San Diego and San Bernardino, were next, producing seven and six death penalty appeals, respectively.  Sacramento and Fresno counties – eighth and tenth on the population lists – and San Mateo County accounted for five cases each in five years.

Santa Clara, the sixth biggest county, accounted for four death penalty appeals, as did Kern County (also a frequent source of civil cases during these years).  Ventura County was next, accounting for three death penalty appeals in five years, and the remaining jurisdictions produced either two cases or one over the five-year period.

Table 40

Join us here next week as we turn to analyzing the docket for the years 2010 to 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Hunter Desportes (no changes).