Felony Case-Processing Time in 12 Jurisdictions Typically Take Longer to Process Than a Criminal Defendant's Right to a Cases in the Lower Courts
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u.s. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Excessive delays in adjudicating accus ed felons may violate a defendant's August 1986 righ t to a speedy trial while also un dermining the community's interest in :\lost S ta tes and the Federal Gov on the time it takes to prosecute punishing those who violate the law. ernment have laws ensuring that felony cases in a variety of jurisdic This re90rt 9resents data on the speed criminal trials take place within a tions throughout the country. This with which felony cases are 9rocessed reasonable period of time. Not only special report presents such data for in 12 mostly urban jurisdictions. It do defendan ts have a constitutional different types of dispositions-dis shows the ela9sed time from arrest to right to a speedy trial, but law missals, pleas, and trials-and for disposition both for felony arrests that abiding citizens also can reasonably various classes of crime. resulted in charges being filed in court expect that those who victimize Special thanks are due to the and for those filed cases that were sub others will receive appropriate prosecutors in the 12 jurisdictions sequently indicted and bound over to sanc tions wiLhou t unnecessary delays. who generously supplied the data the felony court for dis~)Qsition. As part of its "Prosecution of presented in this report. Felony Arrests" series, the Bureau Stev~n R. Schlesinger The 12 jurisdictions have a median of Justice Statistics collects data Director 90pulation of nearly 600,000 and in clude such major cities as Los Angeles, CaliL; San Diego, CaliL; :ilanhattan dictions provided data on more than or fiscal 1981; in New Orleans and (NYC), N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; Salt 100,000 felony arrests that resulted in Rhode Island the data are for cases Lake City, Utah; Portland, Ore.; and court filings and more than 50,000 initiated in calendar 1980. Cases were New Orleans, La.; as well as the State cases indicted. In 10 jUrisdictions the subsequently disposed in the same or of Rhode Island (table 1). These juris- da ta are for cases ini tia ted in calendar later years. The major findings include: Table 1. Participating jurisdictions .. On average in the jurisdictions Population :';u:nber af studied, about half of all felony arrests of leg:al C.l:iies Cases InCle ted jurisclc tion, :,lajor CI ty filed in and bound for which charges were filed in court 1930 a in Jurlsdic tion Legal jurisdiction court over for trial were disposed of in 31/2 months or less. For cases indic ted and bound over Total 10~,307 51,397 for trial the case-processing time was 7,477,657 Los ,\ngeles, Calif. Los Angeles Co',n ty 29,~6-1b 18,752 just under 5 months. 1,361,3-16 San Diego, Cali f. San Diego County 11,534 -1,734 1,427,533 olanhattan, ~. Y. )few York C;:,unt',' 30,310 S,173 o Cases resulting in trials took abou t 947,15-1 PrOVidence, R.t. State of Rhode LSland 5,-135 3.90-1 twice as long to dispose of (slightly 637,631 WaShington, D.C. WaShington, D.C. g,44~ 3 .-.&.."", ~, 61~ ,066 Salt Lake City, L'tah Salt Lake County 2,745 1,546 over 7 mon ths) as those reslJl ting in 562,6-\0 Portland, Ore. ~lultnomah C;:,unty 3,392 3,641 guilty pleas or dismissals. 557J~82 )few Orleans, La. Orleans Parish 3,559 c 3,659 -\53,085 St. Lou is, :,[0. St. Louis City 3 t 649 2,770 o Generally, the more serious the 374,132 Golden, Colo. 1st JUdicial District 1,338 866 charge the longer the case-processing 245,94-1 Brighton, Colo. 17th JUdicial District 1,H2 d 362d time. For all felony arrests for which 125,975 Pueolo, Colo. 10th Judicial District 339 1 ~" ," charges were filed in court, case aU.S. Bureau of the Census, 1980 Census. crn New Orleans cases filed and cases processing time ranged from a low o[ !>-£xcludes a number of felony arrests filed as mis ir.dic ted are the same. 3.2 months [or larceny and burglary to demeanors and handled by municipal ~rosecutors. Partial counts. a high of 6.2 months for homicide. 101985 U.S. Depal1ment of Justice National Institute of Justice This document has been reproduced exactly as received from the person or organization originating it. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Institute of Justice. Permission to reproduce this c{)~~ed material has been granted by Public Domain/Bureau of Justice Statlstics7US Department of Justice to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). FUrther reproduction ('ltside of the NCJRS system requires permis sion of the oopyf'igJ:lt owner. .--.. • rises to 4.9 months. Felony cases Right to a speedy trial Table 2. Felony case-processing time in 12 jurisdictions typically take longer to process than A criminal defendant's right to a cases in the lower courts. This is speedy trial is guaranteed by the Sixth Average elapsed time from because (1) unlike misdemeanor cases arrest to disl!osition for: they typically require preliminary Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Cases "In all criminal prosecutions, the indicted hearings or grand jury presentations, accused shall enjoy the right to a Cases and bound (2) generally felony cases are viewed filed in over as more serious and wOL·thy of greater speedy and public trial ...." court for trial Determining when this right has been attention and court resources than violated, however, is rarely a matter of Total (mean) 3.5 mos. 4.9 mos. cases disposed in lower courts, and (3) felony court is where most trials, the simple objective fact. In Barker v. Typ e 0 f disposi tion Wingo (407 U.S. 514, 530-33 (1972» the Dismissal 2.8 5.3 most time-consuming type of disposi Supreme Court spelled out four factors Guilty plea 3.4 4.5 tion, take place. for courts to weigh in determining if a Trial 7.1 7.4 defendant's constitutional right to a :'lost serious charge Type of disposition speedy trial has been denied. The Homicide 6.2 7.1 Sexual assault -t.2 6.0 length of the delay is the most im!?or Robbery 3.5 4.4 For both cases filed in court and tant consideration, but it must be Burglary 3.2 4.1 cases indicted, trial dispositions take judged in ligh t of the reasons for the Larceny 3.2 4.7 considerably longer than dismissals or guilty pleas. Trial dispositions for delay. Deliberate attempts to delay by Data are derived from 12 different the government weigh heavily in favor Note: cases filed took just over 7 months and jurisdictions and represent median case 1 of the defendant. Certain reasons, such processing times within jurisdictions averaged for cases indicted just under 7 /2 as the absence of a key witness, are using the mean across all jurisdictions with months. These times are nea.rly identi available data. Data for "total" and "type of cal because most tr:als-in some juris considered valid. The court must also disposition" were available from all 12 determine if the defendant asserted his jurisdictions; data for "most serious charge" dictions almost all the trials-take right to a speedy trial and if the delay were available for 9 jurisdictions. The elapsed place in felony court. prejudiced the case against the time in months was computed by dividing the defendant. elapsed time in days by 30.4 (the average For cases filed, dismissals take less number of days per month in a nonleap year). than half as long as trials (2.8 months Speedy trial laws vs. 7.1 mon ths). This indica tes thn t pled guilty, or the defendant was con most dismissals occur relatively early Federal and State laws, referred to victed or acquitted at trial.* No ad in the court process. After a case is as "s!?eedy trial laws, 11 attem!?t to justments were made for time periods indicted and bound over to the felony supplement the imprecise definitions of considered excludable time according court, dismissals take considerably the Sixth Amendment by introducing to the various State speedy trial laws. longer (5.3 months), though still less quantitative measures of unacceptable Thus, the case disposition times repre time than trials. This may be because delay. The Federal Speedy Trial Act of sent the elapsed calendar time from the weakest and least serious cases 1974, amended in 1979, s!?ccifies time arrest to final court disposi lion. those most li)<ely to be quickly standards for the two primary stages in dismissed-have been weeded out the Federal court !?rocess. Thirty days The times presented represent the before indictment. are allowed from arrest to indictment overall jurisdiction average for the and 70 days from indictment to trial. reporting jurisdictions. These were Since approximately 7096 to 8096 of Certain time periods, such as those calculated first by computing the trials typically result in a conviction, associated with hearings on pretrial median case-processing time within comparing disposition times for tL'ials motions, incompetency hearings, and each jurisdiction and then taking the vs. guilty pleas gives a rough indica tion absence of a material witness, are arithmetic mean (average) of these of how much longer it takes to get a considered excludable time. values across jurisdictions. The use of conviction by trial ra ther than by a medians as the measure of central plea.