For the past several weeks, we’ve been reviewing the originating jurisdictions – in nearly all cases, the county Superior Court – which have accounted for the California Supreme Court’s civil, criminal and death penalty dockets. Yesterday, we reviewed the civil docket between 2010 and 2015.  Today, we turn to the criminal docket for the same years.

Interestingly, the distribution of the criminal docket over the past six years has tracked population much more closely than the civil docket has.  Los Angeles County produced 88 cases, or only 25.88% of the docket.  San Diego County produced 30 cases, putting it almost exactly in line with its share of the population at 8.82%.  Orange County is in line with its population as well, producing 29 criminal cases, or 8.53% of the docket.  However, Riverside County – the fourth biggest county in terms of population – was second in criminal caseload, accounting for 38 cases, or 11.18% of the docket.  San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Sacramento and Alameda counties, the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth most populous counties, produced 19, 19, 17 and 14 criminal cases, respectively – each around 5% of the criminal docket.

Contra Costa County, ninth in population, was next, producing nine criminal cases at the Court in six years.  Tulare and Sonoma counties had five each.  San Francisco – a much bigger player in the civil docket – produced only four criminal cases, as did Monterey County.  Solano, Yolo, Kings and Lassen counties produced three each.  The rest of the docket was scattered, with nineteen different jurisdictions accounting for either two or one case between 2010 and 2016.

Join us back here next Thursday, as we turn our attention to the death penalty docket for the years 2010 to 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Doc Searls (no changes).

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been reviewing the originating jurisdiction for the California Supreme Court’s civil, criminal and death penalty dockets since 2000.  Today, we begin the final phase of our review: the years 2010-2015, beginning with the civil docket.

We began this process by reviewing the 2010 county population data for California.  That data reflects that Los Angeles County is 26.38% of the state’s population.  The next two most populous counties, San Diego and Orange, are well behind at 8.33% and 8.1%.

As we can see in Table 41, Los Angeles County has dominated the civil docket during the past six years.  In fact, the fraction of the docket arising from Los Angeles County is even somewhat higher than one would expect based solely on population.  Los Angeles produced 15 cases in 2011 and 2013, 13 in 2010, ten in 2014 and 11 in 2015, and nine in 2012.  In all, 39.67% of the civil docket arose from Los Angeles County.  Orange County was only slightly under its share of the population, producing 14 cases for 7.61% of the civil docket.  Another 14 civil cases were certified questions from the Ninth Circuit.  San Francisco, despite not being one of the ten most populous counties in the state, was once again an important source for the civil docket, accounting for eleven cases over the six years.  San Diego County, the second biggest county in the state in terms of population, accounted for ten cases, or 5.43% of the civil docket, as did Santa Clara, the state’s sixth biggest county.  Alameda and Sacramento counties, the seventh and eighth biggest counties in population respectively, were next, accounting for nine and eight cases.  Riverside and San Bernardino counties – fourth and fifth in population – produced four civil cases, as did the Workers Compensation Appeals Board.  Contra Costa – the ninth most populous county – accounted for only two civil cases, as did San Joaquin, Marin, Monterey, Ventura and Stanislaus counties.  An additional eleven counties accounted for one civil case each.

Join us back here tomorrow as we turn our attention to the criminal docket between 2010 and 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Nestor Ferraro (no changes).

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.

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).

Last week, we concluded our look at the geographical sources of the California Supreme Court’s docket between 2000 and 2004 and addressed the civil docket between 2005 and 2009.  This week, we address the criminal and death penalty dockets during the years 2005 through 2009.

Los Angeles once again dominated the criminal docket, producing 24 cases in 2005, 11 in 2006, 19 in 2007, 21 in 2008 and 12 in 2009.  Orange County, the third most populous county in the state in 2010, was second in the criminal caseload during these years, producing 22 cases in five years.  Alameda County, the seventh biggest county, was the third most frequent home jurisdiction for the criminal docket between 2005 and 2009, producing four cases in 2005 and 2006 and five in 2007 and 2009.  Santa Clara, the sixth biggest county, was tied with Alameda, producing six cases in 2006, five in 2009, and a total of 18 for the entire five years.  The counties ranking second, fourth and eighth in population, San Diego, Riverside and Sacramento, were next, accounting for sixteen cases apiece.  San Diego accounted for seven cases in 2007 by itself, and a total of 16 for the entire period.  Sacramento and Riverside Counties topped out at sixteen in all too, with five for both Sacramento and Riverside in 2008, and five more for Riverside County in 2009.

One of the counties in the next spot was no surprise.  San Bernardino County is the fifth biggest county in the state, and accounted for eleven cases over the five-year period.  But Kern County – nowhere to be found on the list of most populous counties – accounted for eleven cases too, including four each in 2005 and 2006.  Fresno County, the ninth biggest county in the state in terms of population, accounted for nine cases, including three in 2009 alone.  San Mateo County and Contra Costa County (the ninth biggest county in terms of population) were next, with eight and seven criminal cases, respectively.  Ventura and San Joaquin Counties were next, producing four cases apiece for the criminal docket.

We turn next in Table 39B to the lesser counties on the criminal docket between 2005 and 2009.  Tulare County of central California produced seven cases in five years, including four in 2007 and two more in 2008.  Yolo and Monterey counties produced three cases each.  The remaining jurisdictions on the Court’s criminal docket produced no more than one or two cases apiece in five years’ time.

Join us back here tomorrow as we address the geographical sources of the death penalty docket between 2005 and 2009.  Next week, we’ll turn to the sources of the docket between 2010 and 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Jan Arendtsz (no changes).

Last week, we began our analysis of the geographical sources of the California Supreme Court’s docket with a close look at the civil and criminal dockets.  Today, we begin our review of the next five years in our period of study, 2005 to 2009, with a look at the civil docket.  Since the civil docket was considerably more spread out geographically during these years than it had been between 2000 and 2004, we report the data in Tables 38A and 38B for the sake of clarity.

Los Angeles was by far the biggest source of civil cases, just as it had been the previous five years.  Indeed, Los Angeles County was slightly overrepresented on the civil docket, accounting for 32.91% of the civil docket while having 26.38% of the State’s population.  San Diego – the second biggest county in terms of population, but a lesser player on the civil docket from 2000 to 2004 – was the second biggest contributor between 2005 and 2009, accounting for 23 cases, or 9.7% of the docket (again, this is slight overrepresentation in terms of population – in 2010, San Diego had 8.33% of the state’s population).  Sacramento, the eighth largest county in terms of population, was right behind San Diego, producing 22 cases.  Once again, San Francisco was significantly overrepresented on the civil docket, accounting for nineteen civil cases, or 8.02% of the docket.  Orange County, the third largest county in terms of population, was fifth in terms of civil caseload, producing nine cases.  Alameda and San Bernardino counties, seventh and fifth in population, were tied for sixth with eight cases apiece.  Santa Clara County, the sixth biggest county, accounted for seven cases, and seven civil cases were heard as certified questions from the Ninth Circuit.  Riverside County, fourth biggest in the state by population, produced five cases, as did the Workers Compensation Appeals Board.

Santa Barbara County was next, producing four cases, or 1.69% of the civil caseload. Three smaller counties, San Joaquin, Monterey and Humboldt, were next, with three cases each.  Nine different counties – Tulare, Fresno, Marin, San Mateo, San Luis Obispo, Kern, Shasta, El Dorado and Solano – accounted for two cases apiece.

Our review of the civil docket between 2005 and 2009 once again demonstrates that there is no particularly strong connection between the size of a county and its prominence on the Supreme Court’s civil docket.  Only three counties in the top ten in population – Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento – account for a higher proportion of the civil docket during these five years than they do of the state’s population.  Three more counties – San Bernardino, Santa Clara, and Alameda – are arguably at least slightly underrepresented.  San Bernardino has 5.47% of the population, but 3.38% of the civil caseload; Santa Clara has 4.8% of the population, but 2.96% of the cases; and Alameda has 4.06% of the population and 3.38% of the cases.  Four counties are arguably seriously underrepresented during these years – Orange (8.1% population, 3.8% civil cases); Riverside (5.88% and 2.11%), Contra Costa (2.82% and 0.42%), and Fresno (2.5% and 0.84%).

Join us back here next week, as we turn to the criminal and death penalty dockets between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by David Orban (no changes).

Last week, we began our review of the originating jurisdiction for the California Supreme Court’s docket since 2000 with a look at the civil and criminal dockets between 2000 and 2004.  We discovered that while Los Angeles County, the largest county in the state in terms of population, dominates both the criminal and civil docket, the rest of the docket is not especially correlated with population.  Today, we look at a particular subset of the criminal docket – automatic appeals from death sentences under Penal Code Section 1239(b).  We would expect the death penalty docket to have at least some relation to population, but that correlation is tempered by the political leanings of a particular county, since in order to wind up on the Court’s death docket, a prosecutor must first seek the death penalty and a jury must agree to impose it.  If that theory turns out to be true, we would expect to see jurisdictions on the list with lesser populations, but more of a conservative political inclination.

In Table 37 below, we report the home counties of the death penalty appeals heard by the Court from 2000 to 2004.  Once again, Los Angeles dominates, accounting for five death cases in 2000, four in 2001, only two in 2002, seven in 2003 and six in 2004.  Measured against population, this means Los Angeles is slightly overrepresented during these years on the death docket – while it had 26.38% of the state’s population (as of 2010), it accounted for 30.38% of the death penalty appeals.  Next most common was Shasta County, which accounted for six death penalty appeals in these five years – one per year, except for 2002, in which there were two.  San Bernardino County, the fifth most populous county in the state, was third in death penalty appeals with five – one in 2000 and 2003, and three in 2004.  Orange, Alameda and Riverside counties, which are third, seventh and fourth, respectively, in population, also produced five death penalty appeals apiece.  San Diego, the second biggest county in population, produced four death penalty appeals during these years, as did two relatively sparsely populated Kern and Stanislaus counties.  Sacramento and Contra Costa counties were next, with three death penalty appeals spread across the five-year period.  El Dorado, Santa Clara and Fresno counties produced two death penalty appeals each.  Not surprisingly, San Francisco County was a minor player on the death penalty docket with only one death penalty appeal – presumably a product of a historically liberal jury pool.  San Joaquin County accounted for one death penalty appeal, as did Madera, Butte and Monterey counties.

Join us back here tomorrow as we turn our attention to the makeup of the civil docket between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Spiros Vathis (no changes).

Yesterday, we began our consideration of a new issue, reviewing the originating jurisdictions for the Court’s civil docket between 2000 and 2004. We showed that with the exception of Los Angeles leading the way, there seemed to be relatively little relationship between the Court’s docket and population. Today, we consider the Court’s criminal, quasi-criminal, juvenile and disciplinary dockets during the same five-year period.

Los Angeles dominates the criminal docket even more than it does the civil side. The Court decided 25 criminal cases originating in Los Angeles in 2000, 20 in 2001, 19 in 2002 and 2003, and 16 in 2004. Although San Francisco had an outsized influence on the civil docket during these five years, it’s nowhere to be seen in the criminal docket, contributing one case in 2000 and 2002, and none at all the other years. For most of this period, the second most common county on the criminal docket was Orange, the third most populous county in the state. The Court decided four criminal cases from Orange County in 2000, five in 2001, six each in 2002 and 2003, and five in 2004. San Diego, a relatively minor contributor to the civil docket during these years, was tied for the third most common county on the criminal docket, accounting for thirteen cases between 2000 and 2004. Surprisingly, the other county contributing thirteen cases was Shasta, which is nowhere to be found on the list of ten most populous counties. The Court heard one criminal case from Shasta County in 2000, two each in 2001, 2002 and 2003, and six in 2004. Santa Clara – the sixth most populous county – was next, producing three criminal cases in 2000, and two per year from 2001 through 2004. Kern County, which like Shasta does not make the top ten counties in population, was next on the list, producing one criminal case in 2000, two in 2001, three each in 2002 and 2003, and two in 2004. Riverside and Alameda Counties, which are fourth and seventh, respectively, in population, were tied for sixth in criminal cases, producing ten each. In both cases, this was to a considerable degree the product of a one-year spike, as Riverside produced half its ten cases in 2001, and Alameda produced five criminal cases in 2002.

Although the California Supreme Court’s civil docket is geographically varied, the criminal docket is even more so. The Court heard criminal cases originating in 16 different jurisdictions in 2000, twenty in 2001, twenty-six different jurisdictions in 2002, twenty-three in 2003 and 24 in 2004.

Join us back here next Thursday, as we turn our attention first to the California Supreme Court’s death penalty docket from 2000 and 2004, and then to the geographical sources of the dockets between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Kristin Klein (no changes).

Last week, we concluded our review of the jurisdictional sources of the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets. Today, we turn to a new question: where do the Court’s dockets come from geographically? As we discussed a few weeks ago, one of the variables tracked in our databases is the originating jurisdiction for every case the Court hears.

First, a bit of context. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of April 1, 2010, California’s population was 37,253,956. According to the California Department of Finance, the ten most populous counties, with their estimated population in 2010, were:

To put it another way, Los Angeles County accounts for 26.38% of California’s population. The next two biggest counties, San Diego and Orange, are far behind at 8.33% and 8.1%, respectively. We would expect, at least as an opening hypothesis, the Court’s docket to roughly approximate California’s population.

We report the data for the civil docket between 2000 and 2004 in Table 34 below. As we expected, Los Angeles dominated the civil docket during these initial five years, contributing 21 cases in 2000, 15 the next year, 14 in 2002, 13 in 2003 and 21 in 2004. But in second place for most of that period, we have a surprise. San Francisco County doesn’t even make the top ten California counties in population, but in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004, it contributed the second-most civil cases to the Court’s docket (6 in 200 and 2002, 5 in 2003 and 7 in 2004). In 2001, San Francisco was the third most common county in the civil docket, with the Court deciding four cases. The third most common county on the Court’s docket in 2000 was Santa Clara, which ranked sixth in population in 2010. In 2001, the only year that San Francisco fell out of second place, the second most common county on the Court’s civil docket was Orange County. Interestingly, with the exception of 2004, when it tied for third (at five cases) with Orange County, San Diego County – the second biggest county in the state in 2010 in terms of population – was a relatively minor player on the civil docket, producing two cases in 2000, three in 2001, two in 2002, and three in 2004. Riverside and San Bernardino – the fourth and fifth most populous counties in the state in the 2010 census – were also relatively minor players on the civil docket between 2000 and 2004. The Court decided two cases from Riverside County in 2000 and 2002, and one in 2001, 2003 and 2004. The Court decided three cases from San Bernardino in 2002 and 2003, two in 2001, one in 2000 and none at all in 2004. The Court has regularly accepted certified questions from the Ninth Circuit as well, deciding two in 2000, three in 2001, four in 2002 and one in 2003.

The Court’s civil docket was drawn from a wide variety of jurisdictions between 2000 and 2004. In 2000, 2002 and 2003, sixteen different jurisdictions contributed at least one case. In 2001, the Court decided civil cases from 15 different jurisdictions, and in 2004, the Court decided cases from 13 different jurisdictions.

Join us back here tomorrow as we turn our attention to the criminal docket between 2000 and 2004.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Edward Stojakovic (no changes).