As we continue our review of the milestones lag time data from the Court’s past thirty years of criminal cases, in this post we’re looking at the average wait from oral argument to decision. Of course, Article VI, Section 19 of the California Constitution requires that criminal cases, just like civil ones, be decided within ninety days of submission. Occasionally, the Court either delays submission or vacates submission and starts the clock anew, but for the most part, this is a hard deadline for argument-to-decision.

In 1990, the average lag time was 97.12 days (an indication of an outlier case in the data). In 1991, the average was 55.47 days. The average stayed close to the same level for several years: 54.62 days in 1992, 52.42 days in 1993, 58.22 days in 1994 and 57.9 days in 1995. The average jumped to 83.43 days in 1996, but it fell to 68.82 days in 1997, 78.29 days in 1998 and 71.81 days in 1999.

In 2000, the average wait was 68.02 days. The next two years, it stayed about the same: 65.91 days (2001) and 69.69 days (2002). In 2003, it rose to 79.29. In 2004, it was 74.08. In 2005, it was 73.23. In 2006, it was 75.62. The average wait was 70.34 days in 2007, 70.21 days in 2008 and 69.23 days in 2009.

The average wait remained about the same from 2010 to 2016: 70.19 (2010), 70.22 (2011), 73.22 (2012), 70.54 (2013), 69.69 (2014), 71 (2015) and 77.17 days (2016). In 2017, the average wait rose to 83.9 days. In 2018, it was 84.66. So far in 2019, it has been 84.09 days.

Join us here on Thursday as we continue addressing the lag time data.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Miheco (no changes).