Overview: Appellate Case Reporting

 

The appellate court reporting matrices have been completely revised since the publication in 1989 of the State Court Model Statistical Dictionary. As a result, four distinct reporting matrices have been developed: the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix, the Petition for Review–Caseload Summary matrix case, the Death Penalty–Caseload Summary matrix, and the Other Appellate–Caseload Summary matrix.  Common to all of the matrices is the fact that cases are no longer divided based on the mandatory or discretionary authority of the court.  Instead, cases are divided by case type classifications (criminal, civil, death penalty direct appeal, application for writ, etc.) and by subcategories of those classifications (small claims, divorce, interlocutory death penalty appeal, bar discipline, etc.).  The new reporting matrices allow the court to better track workload issues by providing a means to report more detailed information about the cases in which they are involved.

 

The new appellate case reporting method contains three additional changes that deserve special attention.

 

First, the criminal appeal subcategories now focus on felony versus other criminal appeals rather than capital criminal versus other criminal appeals.  This is important because 1) capital criminal (death penalty) matters are no longer counted in the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix, but rather in the Death Penalty–Caseload Summary matrix, and 2) non-capital felony appeals can now be distinguished from misdemeanor and all other criminal appeals.

 

Second, the new Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix follows the trial court matrices in that Domestic Relations case appeals are recognized as a distinct case type category.  Separating the domestic relations case appeals from the Civil case appeals allows the courts to better track the issues arising from the domestic relations (or family law) cases.

 

Third, since the distinction between mandatory and discretionary jurisdiction is no longer being made, cases that are not appeals should not be counted in the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix. Cases such as certified questions, advisory opinions, or original proceedings are now counted in a separate Other Appellate–Caseload Summary matrix so that courts can use the information in the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix to focus specifically on the details of the appeals that are being brought before them.

 

The Manner of Disposition matrix has also been completely redesigned to allow courts to report more detailed accounts of their decisions. This matrix reports the disposition of the four appellate court case categories distinguished in the separate caseload summary matrices described above.

 

Note that in the Manner of Disposition matrix the subcategories for the major case categories have been aggregated for ease of reporting.  For example, while in the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix there are seven subcategories of Criminal cases, in the Appeal–Manner of Disposition matrix there is a single row labeled Criminal, which reports on all the criminal cases, and thus corresponds to the TOTAL Criminal row in the Appeal–Caseload Summary matrix.

 

There are now three distinct steps to reporting case dispositions.

 

The first step is the Manner of Disposition—how many cases were Decided, Dismissed, Denied, Transferred to Another Court, or disposed by Other Resolution.

 

The second step reports the Type of Court Opinion—how many cases the court disposed as Published Opinion, Memorandum Decision, Order, Per Curiam Affirmed, or Other Opinion.

 

The third step reports Case Outcomes—how many decisions were Affirmed, Reversed, Reversed and Remanded for New Trial, Remanded for New Sentence Hearing Only, Modified and Remanded to Intermediate Appellate Court, or resulted in Other Modifications.