One might expect that in an overburdened system, cases would take longer to dispose of than they used to. To find out, we look at felony cases involving adults who were convicted and sentenced in state courts. As in the preceding panel, the data come from the nation's 75 largest counties, where half of the nation's serious crimes occur. The charted data show median elapsed time from arrest to sentencing and median elapsed time according to case disposition (jury trial, bench trial [one that is heard by a judge with no jury present], and guilty plea).
According to the FBI, there were 14.5 million arrests in 1998 for all causes. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, state courts convicted nearly 930,000 adults of a felony in 1998. This was up 39% over 1988 (667,366) and up 4% over 1992 (893,630). Government statistics sources do not reveal how many cases were plea bargained.
Felony cases are complicated and take longer than other types of cases to resolve. The table beginning on the next page shows the percent change from 1992 to 1998 in the median number of days to dispose of cases by type of felony offense and case disposition.
Percent Change in Median Elapsed Time from Arrest to Sentencing: 1992 to 1998
| Offense | Percent Change in Median Number of Days for Cases Disposed by: | ||||||||
| Trial | Guilty | ||||||||
| Total | Total | Jury | Bench | Plea | |||||
| All Offenses | 8 | 51 | 30 | 50 | 10 | ||||
| Violent Offenses | 10 | 37 | 24 | 51 | 15 | ||||
| Property Offenses | 15 | 61 | 57 | 35 | 20 | ||||
| Drug Offenses | -7 | 54 | 31 | 50 | 2 | ||||
| Drug Possession | -9 | 58 | 37 | 51 | 0 | ||||
| Drug Trafficking | 2 | 42 | 30 | 43 | 3 | ||||
| Weapons Offenses | -2 | 30 | 14 | 52 | 1 | ||||
| Other Offenses1 | 5 | 70 | 20 | 77 | 9 | ||||
In 1998 the median disposition time for all felony cases was 149 days, up 8% over 1992. At a median 300 days in 1998, jury trial cases took the longest time (up 30% over the 1992 median of 231). Bench trials took 256 days (up 50% over the 1992 median of 171). Guilty plea dispositions took the least amount of time — 153 days (up 10% from 1992, 139 days). The only offenses for which median days declined were weapons offenses (down 2%) and drug offenses (down 9%). The decline for drug offenses was due to a decline in median number of days to dispose of cases of drug possession.
To return to your case: At the start of your trial for larceny/theft, you would have been given the choice of a jury trial or a bench trial. Let us say you chose a bench trial. Some 256 days after your arrest, the judge finds you guilty. As the saying goes: "The mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine." The judge now hands down a sentence that you don't like. What can you do? You might consider appealing to a higher (appellate) court. What are your chances of prevailing there? Not very good, according to Nolo.com: "Appeals judges generally resist overruling trial court judgments and prefer to give trial judges wide discretion in the conduct of trials. As many appellate courts have said, defendants are not guaranteed 'perfect' trials. Normally an appellate court will overturn a guilty verdict only if the trial court made an error of law that significantly contributed to the outcome." Too bad for you. Upon reflection, and after a review of the attorney fees you have paid up to now, you choose not to appeal. Refer to Chapter 9 for a discussion of prisons.
Returning to the topic of our overburdened legal system, the independent National Center for State Courts (NCSC) provides heavily footnoted (that is, often incomplete) data on appellate and trial court caseloads in the states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Some highlights from NCSC's report for 2001: The total number of cases filed in state trial courts (both criminal and civil cases) reached an eight-year high of 92 million. Domestic violence filings were up 11% over the preceding five years. The number of felony cases filed between 1998 and 2000 remained stable.
We have seen that only a fraction of the crimes reported to the police are ever resolved by an arrest, and only a fraction of the miscreants arrested ever go to trial. For example, homicide, with the highest clearance rate of all serious crimes, had only a 69% clearance rate in 1999, down from 76% in 1976 (homicides of children are the most likely to be cleared). One might wonder what would happen to our legal system if the clearance rate were higher — if more people, in other words, were arrested and then tried?
In the 1980s, calls for court reform led to the adoption of performance standards and measures in state courts.9 Many states now have deadlines for completing felony cases — deadlines that can't always be met. For example, the state of Florida recommends 180 days to complete a felony case. In July 2002 the Tallahassee Democrat reported on court costs and case delays in Leon County (Tallahassee is the seat). More than 25% of felony cases in Leon County took longer than 180 days to resolve, up from 10% of cases in 1992. The newspaper reported that the biggest factor contributing to the delays is the number of felony case filings, but "legislators, prosecutors, defendants and their attorneys all help bog down the system."10 Why should the public care? Because "operating the [Leon County] court costs more than twice as much as it did 10 years ago, even though the crime rate has been dropping." Taxpayers foot the bill.
Ostrom and Hanson (quoted at the beginning of this panel) studied nine criminal trial courts. They suggest that overburdened courts might simply be inefficient: "Timeliness and the quality of justice are not mutually exclusive either in theory or in fact," they wrote. "The evidence suggests that well-performing courts should be expected to excel in terms of both timeliness and quality."
The American legal system is complex, confusing, sometimes infuriating, constantly evolving, and everyone has an opinion about its fairness, impartiality, and incorruptibility. With regard to its timeliness, Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger reminded the American Bar Association back in 1972 (when technology was being touted as the way to expedite case disposition): "Concepts of justice must have hands and feet or they remain sterile abstractions. The hands and feet we need are efficient means and methods to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America."
The insanity defense (next) is also a challenge to lawyers and judges. How do we reconcile the complexities of the human mind and the rigidity of the law?
Sources: Chart: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Felony Sentences in State Courts, various years; http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/. Brian J. Ostrom and Roger A. Hanson, Efficiency, Timeliness, and Quality: A New Perspective From Nine State Criminal Trial Courts, National Center for State Courts, 1999. Court Statistics Project, State Court Caseload Statistics, 2001, (National Center for State Courts 2001)., Table 15, and Press Release (March 28,2002), http://www.ncsconline.org/. James L. Rosica, "A slow process," July 19,2002, http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/special_packages/justice/3696380.htm. James Alan Fox and Marianne Zawitz, Homicide Trends in the United States, Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/htius.pdf. Fredric I. Lederer, "Courtroom Technology From the Judges' Perspective, http://www.courtroom21.net/About_Us/Articles/judicial.html#N_9_. Information retrieved October 24, 2002.
User Comments Add a comment…