Last week, I was looking at our archives, pulling up old research, and I stumbled onto this two-year old post – my 500th on Appellate Strategist. Now that our other two blogs, Illinois Supreme Court Review and California Supreme Court Review, have been publishing for a while, I decided to check the dashboards there

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Yesterday, we looked at whether defendants are winning a higher fraction of appeals in criminal cases between 1994 and 2005.  Today, we’re looking at the years 2006 through 2016.

In 2010, defendants won eleven criminal cases.  In 2012, defendants won ten cases.  Beginning in 2014, defendants have won more cases each year – twelve in

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Earlier this week, I joined “Air Talk” on KPCC radio for a discussion of the California Supreme Court’s recent criminal decisions, beginning with People v. Gutierrez, in which the Court reversed three convictions for the first time in many years based upon Batson/Wheeler (strikes from the jury pool based on minority status) error.  So I

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Yesterday, we analyzed the Court’s experience with amicus briefs in criminal cases between 1994 and 2005.  Today, we’ll look at the Court’s experience with amicus briefs in criminal cases between 2006 and 2016.

Winners averaged more amicus support than losing parties in criminal affirmances only about one-third of the time during this period.  In 2006,