Today we conclude our review of the data on the sources of appellate jurisdiction on the civil and criminal dockets of the Illinois Supreme Court between 2000 and 2015. We’ve shown that in a typical year, final judgments comprise between fifty-five and seventy percent of the Court’s civil docket, although that figure has at times drifted somewhat higher. Final judgments are somewhat less predominant on the criminal docket, typically amounting to between forty-five and fifty-five percent of the Court’s criminal docket.
The jurisdictional data for the criminal docket in 2010 is reported in Table 152 below. Appeals from final judgments were slightly down from 2009 as a fraction of the criminal docket at 49.09% (27 cases). Habeas corpus appeals were up from their trend level, amounting to twenty percent of the criminal docket (11 cases). The next three most common grounds for jurisdiction were Rule 604 – appeals by the State and by defendants following a guilty plea – at 9.09%, juvenile court appeals under Rule 660 (7.27%) and appeals based on various statutory grants of jurisdiction.
In 2011, appeals from final judgments were at their highest level in five years as a percentage of the criminal docket – 58.33% of the caseload. Appeals under Rules 603 (6.25%) and 604 (14.58%) were sharply up as well, while habeas appeals under Rule 651 (4.17%), juvenile court appeals under Rule 660 (2.08%) and statutory appeals (2.08%) returned to their trend levels.
The data for 2012 are reported below in Table 154. Appeals from final judgments under Rule 602 were down somewhat at 48.48% of the criminal docket (16 cases). Habeas appeals under Rule 651 returned to nearly their 2010 level at 18.18% of the docket. Rule 604 appeals were 9.09% of the docket as the caseload returned to its 2010 level. The Court heard two cases each – 6.06% of the criminal docket – under Rule 660 and constitutional and statutory jurisdiction.
As shown below in Table 155, appeals from final judgments remained at about the same level in 2013 – 47.37% of the criminal docket (18 cases). Statutory appeals were up sharply in 2013, with the Court hearing 9 cases, or 23.68% of the criminal docket. Appeals pursuant to Rule 604 remained at about the same level, comprising 10.53% of the criminal docket.
The data for 2014 are reported below in Table 156. Rule 602 appeals from final judgments were down to 38.24% of the docket (13 cases). Statutory appeals dropped back towards the historical trend level at 11.76% of the Court’s docket (4 cases). The Court heard three appeals each – 8.82% of the criminal docket – pursuant to Rules 603, 604 and 651.
Appeals from final judgments remained static last year as a percentage of the criminal docket at 42.42%. Rule 604 and 651 appeals were up substantially. The Court heard six cases under each rule, with the share of the docket rising from 8.82% to 18.18%. Appeals under Rule 603 were also up significantly, from 8.82% of the docket to 12.12%.
Join us back here next Tuesday as we turn to the next issue in our review of the Court’s civil and criminal dockets.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Matt Turner (no changes).