Last time, we took a close look at the Supreme Court’s cases involving workers compensation between 1990 and 2017.  This time, we’re looking at the Court’s caseload involving the elements of violent crimes.  For the entire period, 47.37% of the Court’s cases were won by the prosecution below.  The Court reversed 48.15% of the cases won by the prosecution at the Appellate Court, but reversed two thirds of the defendants’ wins.

In Table 819, we review the yearly totals for prosecution wins affirmed by the Supreme Court.  The Court affirmed once in 1992, five times in 1995 and once in 1996, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2015.

Prosecution wins reversed by the Supreme Court are reviewed in the next table.  There was one in 1997, three in 1998, one in 1999, two in 2000 and 2002 and one in 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2011.

We review the ten cases in which defendants’ wins were affirmed in the table below.  There were two in 1992, two in 1998, one per year in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2009 and two in 2012.

The Court reversed two defendants’ wins in 1991, three in 1992, one in 1993 and 1994, two in 1995, one in 1996, two in 1997, one in 1998, two in 2011, one in 2012, one in 2015 and three in 2016.

For the entire period, the Court reversed in 61.4% of its cases involving the elements of violent crimes.  The Court reversed in 52.94% of its cases between 1990 and 1995, three-quarters of its cases from 1996 to 2000, 57.14% of its cases from 2001 to 2005, only one-third of its cases from 2006 to 2010, and 72.73% of its cases since 2011.

Join us back here next week as we turn our attention to two new areas of law.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Evan Courtney (no changes).