Bring in the judges

The 2009 Annual Report for the Texas Judiciary has been released and along with the usual interesting statistics, there is one thing that stands out to me this year.

The numbers from Bell and Lampasas Counties suggest that we need “9.5” district court judicial officers, while we supposedly only have “6.5” (here, page 46).  The explanation for this, according to the report, is that we are among the top twenty or so counties who have the highest average populations served per district court.

The most obvious question, then, is – who is our “.5” judicial officer that we already have?

The next most obvious question is – where are we going to put the three new judges?  The district courthouse is done, and the county is almost finished.  I understand that there will be a couple of extra county courtrooms available.  I don’t suppose there would be any problem with putting a district court on the “county court side” of the new courthouse. 

Or, maybe we could get two more county judges and just give them jurisdiction over all family law cases.  That would certainly free up the district courts!

Federal Pleas and Jury Trials in the Western District

Looking at the latest numbers available (Statistical Information Packet, 2008), it is interesting to note that in 2008 there 76,427 total convictions in the federal system.  Of those, 96.3% of defendants pled guilty and only 3.7% took their case to trial.

Even more interesting is that in the Western District of Texas, there were a total of 7,232 convictions.  Of those, 98.7% pled guilty and a mere 1.3% went to trial.

By comparison, in Texas state court 97.3% of felony convictions were the result of a guilty plea and 2.7% of convictions resulted from a trial. 

So why aren’t more federal defendants in this part of Texas going to trial? 

It can’t be because the prosecutors are recommending lower sentences, because they aren’t.  In fact, given that in almost all cases the judges of the Western District sentenced lower than the national average, maybe losing that “acceptance of responsibility” reduction isn’t that big of a deal!

The Department of Justice vs. The Western District of Texas Judiciary

Even for someone who loves numbers and statistics as much as I do, I am continually amazed at how much data the United States government collects. 

For example, the United States Sentencing Commission publishes quarterly and annual reports on federal sentencing averages.  This is useful information for someone who might be wondering what the average sentence for a federal drug trafficking offense might be (83.2 months nationally, while only 46.5 months in the Western District).

And that leads to an interesting observation:  a defendant in the Western District of Texas is likely to find more mercy from the judge than from the Department of Justice.

In almost every category of offense, the Western District of Texas gives lower average sentences than the rest of the nation (here, page 10).  The four notable exceptions are the offense categories of Embezzlement, Forgery, Bribery, and Tax.

However, where the Western District lags behind the rest of the nation is in government sponsored below range sentences.  Nationally, US Attorneys ask for below range sentences in 25.6% of all cases (that’s one out of four!).  In the Western District, though, the government only seeks reduced sentences in 9.5% of all cases (that’s one out of ten!) (here, page 11).

Nationally, federal judges sentence above the guideline range in 1.5% of all cases, and Western District judges sentence above the guideline range in 1.8% of all cases.

So, for the average defendant in the Western District of Texas, that defendant probably shouldn’t fear the judge – but rather, the prosecutor.