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Study: US judges’ criminal caseloads vary widely

By Frederic J. Frommer
Published November 11, 2012 5:00am ET
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Study: US judges’ criminal caseloads vary widely
HOLD FOR RELEASE AFTER 6:30 P.M. EST AND THEREAFTER ON SUNDAY, NOV. 11, 2012 - FILE - In this May 1, 2008, photo, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington is pictured during a ceremony where the title of chief judge for the U.S. District Court in Washington was passed from Judge Thomas F. Hogan to Lamberth at the federal courthouse in Washington. Federal judges across the nation are shouldering criminal caseloads that vary widely in size, sometimes even among judges in the same courthouse, according to a study released Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012. The study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found three courthouses where the judge with the largest criminal caseload had sentenced more than twice the number of defendants as the judge with the smallest caseload from October 2006 through July 2012. They were Los Angeles, Beaumont, Texas, and Camden, N.J. On the opposite end, the courthouse in the nation's capital had the lowest average number of criminal defendants sentenced per judge _ 147 over the nearly six years in the study. "We have many more complex cases than most of the districts listed in the report,." said Lamberth. He noted that the court handles public corruption cases, white-collar cases, and any prosecution for obstruction of Congress, which can be time-consuming. Just this year, the court tried former baseball pitcher Roger Clemens on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstructing Congress for denying he had used performance-enhancing drugs. A jury acquitted Clemens of all charges after a trial that lasted more than nine weeks. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) | Charles Dharapak

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal judges across the nation are shouldering criminal caseloads that vary widely in size, sometimes even among judges in the same courthouse, according to a study released Sunday.

The study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University found three courthouses where the judge with the largest criminal caseload had sentenced more than twice the number of defendants as the judge with the smallest caseload from October 2006 through July 2012. They were Los Angeles; Beaumont, Texas; and Camden, N.J.

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