Sotomayor's Criminal Law Record

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have quite a bit of data about Sotomayor's performance in 2008 as related to other appellate judges. I decided to break down some of her numbers as compared to her peers in criminal cases. Sotomayor, like many appellate judges, was a former prosecutor. As a result, one might expect her to not be particularly friendly to criminal defendants. However, the conventional wisdom is that appellate judges appointed by Democratic presidents are softer on crime. So, how did Sotomayor stack up? As to her overall record in finding for the criminal defendant, here is how she performed based upon my 2008 dataset:

Average judge 7.16% of criminal appeals were decided in favor of the defendant 

Average judge appointed by a GOP President 7.23%

Average judge appointed by a Dem President 7.11%

Average judge with prosecutor experience Exp 6.17%

Sotomayor 7.27% (55 cases)

Interestingly, GOP and Democratic appointees are very similar in finding for criminal defendants. This might be due to Clinton appointees not being terribly concerned about criminal defendants relative to other Democratic president appointees. Sotomayor is in line with the overall average. Notably, she is a bit tougher on the government than other appellate judges with some prosecutor experience.

The breakdowns don't change by much if we limit the data to instances where the criminal defendant was appealing (since a government appeal is something of an odd duck):

Average judge 6.28% of criminal appeals were decided in favor of the defendant 

Average judge appointed by a GOP President 6.16%

Average judge appointed by a Dem President 6.53%

Average judge with prosecutor experience Exp 5.44%

Sotomayor 7.41%  (54 cases)

In such cases, Sotomayor looks a tad more defendant friendly relative to her peers. However, given the small sample sizes, the difference is not significant.

In applying my activism score to just criminal cases, described here, to Sotomayor, this is how she stacked up (lower score is more activist):

Average judge in criminal cases 22.65

Sotomayor 19.05

Given that Sotomayor was less activist overall, the fact that she is more activist in criminal cases could be noteworthy. This may be due to the fact that she is bolder in criminal cases because of her experience. In contrast, she might be more apt to defer to district court judgment in non-criminal cases because she has less expertise. I will be looking at that relationship as my project moves forward.

I should add the usual cautionary notes. We are dealing with small sample sizes for criminal cases in which Sotomayor was participating. My dataset also specifically excludes habeas cases because of the special standard of review issues in such cases. And, all data here is preliminary. Nonetheless, I think it is interesting to see that Sotomayor is pretty much average in regard to criminal law cases.

Comments

[Jamie]

Corey:

First and foremost, glad to hear the little one is doing fine. My twins were 5 weeks early, but only stayed in the NICU for about 2 weeks, so I can't imagine 49 days. Sounds like all is well on that front.

Now, to business, so to speak... is there a published list of the 55 criminal cases? Do I need to just Westlaw the heck out of it? I can't seem to find a list o' criminal cases for her anywhere online. (SCOTUSblog had a decent overview of "important" civil cases, and promised a criminal update, but they don't seem to have done that.)

Thanks in advance, if you can point me in the right direction (or, heck, thanks just for trying if you can't...)

[Tina Trent]

Do you have more information about the sex crime cases in particular?