This time, we’re reviewing the decline in Appellate Court criminal dockets between 2001 and 2010.
The sharpest decline was in the First District. There were 2,176 new criminal notices of appeal filed in 2000. Although that number rose to 2,334 in 2001, it nosedived to 1,772 in 2002 and stayed around that level for the remainder of the decade.
The data in other Districts changed much less. There were 649 new criminal notices of appeal in the Second District in 2000. By 2006, there were only two fewer. In 2009, there were again 647 new notices of appeal and the number dropped to 607 in 2010.
Criminal notices of appeal actually increased during the decade in the Third District. There were 486 new notices of appeal in 2000. That went up to 525 in 2001 and 539 a year later. After a short dropoff, the data was back up to 578 in 2008 before leveling off to 491 in 2010.
Filings were also up in the Fourth District. There were 493 new criminal notices of appeal in 2000, but the number never fell below 500 between 2001 and 2010. By 2010, there were 552 new criminal notices of appeal.
With the exception of a one-year drop in 2010, filings were steady in the Fifth District. There were 267 new criminal appeals in 2000, but that rose to 363 the following year. After falling back to 296 in 2003, new filings remained between 250 and 300 a year until 2010, when there were 228 new appeals.
Next time, we’ll be reviewing the docket data for the civil side between 2011 and 2020.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Sam Valadi (no changes).