Today, we’re concluding our trip through the death penalty lag time data with a look at the final step in capital litigation: the average wait from oral argument to decision.

In 1990, the average wait was 186.42 days (the result of an outlier case). In 1991, the average was 60.16 days. The average was then in the mid-fifties from 1992 to 1995 before jumping to 82 days in 1996, 72.07 in 1997, 77 in 1998 and 82.33 in 1999.

The average wait was 67.6 days in 2000 and 62.91 in 2001. The average was then in the seventies each year from 2002 to 2008. The average wait was 69.8 days in 2009.

The average wait from oral argument to decision remained in the mid-seventies range from 2010 to 2014. It rose to 79.76 in 2015, 80.25 in 2016, 87.82 in 2017 and 86.57 days in 2018. So far this year, the average wait from oral argument to decision in death cases is 90.2 days.

Join us back here next Thursday as we continue our review of lag time data.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Michelle Kinsey Bruns (no changes).