Yesterday, we compared the Illinois and California Supreme Court’s death penalty caseloads between 1992, the beginning of our California data, through 2010, when Illinois abolished the death penalty.  We found that in the years prior to Governor George Ryan’s 2010 moratorium on executions, Illinois both averaged more death penalty cases per year and was more

Yesterday, we reviewed the Court’s year by year caseload of tort cases.  Today, we’re looking at the Court’s death penalty cases.

The Court decided fifteen death penalty cases in 1990, thirteen cases in 1991, twenty-three cases in 1992, thirteen cases in 1993, seventeen cases in 1994, eighteen cases in 1995 and twenty cases in 1996.

Yesterday, we reviewed the individual Justices’ voting records in death penalty cases for the years 1990 through 1999.  Today, we’re looking at the Justices’ voting records for the years 2000 through abolition in 2010.

Partial reversals with the sentence affirmed were quite rare during the years 2000 through 2004.  Justice Miller led the Court, voting

Yesterday, we began our analysis of the individual Justices’ voting records in death penalty cases – specifically, how often each Justice voted with the majority.  Today, we’ll review the data for the years 2000 through 2010.  First, the years 2000 through 2004.  Justices McMorrow (34 cases), Rarick (4 cases) and Bilandic (17 cases) voted with

For the past several weeks, we’ve been comparing the death penalty jurisprudence of the Illinois and California Supreme Courts.  Having reviewed the county-by-county reversal rates last week, this week we’re looking at the individual Justices.  We’ll review two  indices of the Justices’ views and influence on the Court: first, the percentage of cases where the

Yesterday, we began reviewing the data on majority opinions in death penalty cases from 1990 through the Court’s last death penalty appeal in 2010.  Today, we look at a related question: did the Court’s majority opinions tend to run longer when the Court was partially or fully reversing?

Interestingly, across the entire twenty year period,