Today, we’re concluding our survey of the originating trial courts for the Supreme Court’s criminal cases from the Sixth District, looking at the numbers for the years 2005 to 2019.

In 2005, the Court decided two criminal cases from Santa Clara county.  In 2006, there were four Santa Clara cases and one each from San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.  In 2007, there were three cases from Santa Clara.  In 2008, the Court decided one case each from Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.  In 2009, the Court decided three cases each from Santa Clara and Monterey counties.

Eighty percent of the Court’s Sixth District criminal cases for the years 2010 to 2014 originated in Santa Clara county – two in 2010, one in 2011, two in 2012, five in 2013 and two in 2014.  Santa Cruz county accounted for one case in 2012, and Monterey produced one case each in 2012 and 2014.

Things have been even more lopsided since that time – between 2015 and 2019, ninety percent of the Sixth’s criminal cases have originated in Santa Clara county: four in 2015, three in 2016, one in 2017 and one so far in 2019.  The Court also decided one criminal case from Monterey county in 2018.

For the most part, the criminal cases in the Sixth District are distributed more or less proportionally to its population.  Santa Clara county has 71.52% of the Sixth District population (as of the 2010 census), 76.92% of the criminal cases and 76.56% of the civil cases.  Monterey county has 16.08% of the population, 10.99% of the criminal cases and 15.63% of the civil.  Santa Cruz county is 10.12% of the District’s population and has produced 10.99% of the criminal cases and 6.25% of the civil cases.  Finally, San Benito county has only 2.27% of the total population, 1.1% of the criminal cases and 1.56% of the civil cases.

Join us back here next week as we begin a new series on lag times at the Court.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Egan Snow (no changes).