- Drug possession cases are the main source of increased caseloads in criminal court. Murder, drug dealing and DWI cases are all substantially down.
- Jury trials plummeted between 2005 and 2014, accounting for three percent of felony cases, one percent of misdemeanor cases, and a half percent of civil cases.
- Filings at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined 17 percent between 2005 and 2014.
- The number of capital murder cases filed in 2014 (383) was down 24 percent since 2010.
- Serious juvenile cases are down 19 percent since 2005. Truancy cases are also down and 2013 reforms eliminated 85 percent of Class C tickets given to students for Education Code violations.
- Seventy one percent of defendants charged with felonies were represented by appointed (indigent) counsel; 52 percent of misdemeanor cases were defended through the indigent defense system.
- Here's an overview of the Texas court system's structure.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Infographics on Texas court system
The Office of Court Administration has been publishing a series of interesting infographics about the Texas court system. Here are several that caught Grits' eye.
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9 comments:
Thanks for sharing! All of these infographics are informative on Texas' court system. I think it's interesting especially that there's been such a decrease in jury trials. What is the reason behind this?
So much for winding down the failed War on Drugs. I find it especially interesting that drug cases involving the actual "bad guys" (drug sales and manufacturing) are down a whopping 44% while simple possession cases are down. Talk about going after the wrong people!
@Jordan, just a guess but most criminals are more scared of Texas juries than they are of judges and prosecutors.
To Jordan and 5:49 ... mandatory minimums might have a lot more to do with it.
If you were in that position and even if you were innocent you were told, "you can take 4 years now, or go before a jury and risk 5 to 99," and up until that point you'd had maybe thirty minutes total with your lawyer and you know there's been no effort put into your case, and this lawyer tells you, "by the way, no one will believe you didn't do it, take the plea its the best you're going to get..."
...what would you do?
Bingo, 6:26, you nailed the answer. 5:49 was trolling.
"The first thing we do, is kill all the lawyers"
I don't believe 5.49 was trolling at all. I've seen it happen routinely in our county. Juries consistently give out big sentences and for several months following such a trial, everyone in the jail decides they want to plead guilty. And I've seen any number of times during the trial judge's plea admonishments to defendants where defendants emphatically stated that they "didn't want to have a jury trial." This wasn't because they were necessarily enamored with the prosecutor's plea offer, it was clearly because they were scared of casting their fate to a "jury of their peers."
So what is it you claim has changed since 2005 to make juries punish more harshly, 1:52? It's easy to point to enhancements and prosecutor-friendly court decisions that enhanced prosecutors powers to coerce plea bargains, as 6:26 above implied. What change explains juries supposedly getting harsher, if your explanation is correct?
thanks, can you ask TDCJ a question for me, because when I try to contact them regarding this. I get no answer or some type of run-around lie. Why do TDCJ staffers add cases on inmates for no reason. I have seen this problem often, and nothing is being done to correct this. Whenever a inmate complaints to family members about mistreatment, all of a sudden a new case is put on the inmate. Which in return extends the inmates prison time. I also see a lot of retaliation cases too. Where can you get help for this problem, when you know this is happening. No one in the TDCJ system will help you.
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