The Alabama Supreme Court released its FY 2009-2010 Annual Statistics on Monday. You can read the whole report here (.pdf).
On the plus side: total filings are down a little and overall dispositions are up a bit, leaving 755 pending cases on September 30. A year before, there were 953 pending. They label that a “throughput” of 111.07% — disposing of more cases than were filed for the year.
And some election-year nitty-gritty: Associate Justice Tom Parker typically gets criticized for the number of days he takes to dispose of his cases. This year his raw data remains the high anomaly for the court: 214 days for certiorari petitions and 590 days for original decisions. The court’s average is 98 and 171, respectively.
The Press-Register reported Wednesday that “Parker said obsession with productivity statistics assumes that voters evaluate judges as they would a factory assembly line, measuring the quantity of court opinions.” Parker is up for reelection this year and while his opponent, Judge Mac Parsons, has frequently touted that Parker’s work amounts to less than 5% of the court’s output, he will have to update that number.
According to the new report, Parker can claim 6.4% of the court’s total 1,987 dispositions. He managed to release 104 certiorari petitions (up from just 25 last year) along with 24 original decisions. Only Associate Justice Greg Shaw released fewer — 125 petitions/decisions, or 6.3% of the court’s output.
Also up for reelection is Associate Justice Mike Bolin, who upped his (statistical) productivity again this year. He went from taking 96 to 69 days to release certiorari petitions, and from 259 to 129 days for original decisions. Bolin also released the largest number of certiorari petitions – 106 – while keeping up with most other judges on issuing original decisions (he got 49 out for the year.)
Again, read the entire report for yourself… and I’ll see you in the comments.
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Shameless plug: Back in 2008, Danny requested these very productivity numbers from the Alabama Supreme Court. They’ve released them annually ever since. Kudos!
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