By: Scrutinize and The Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law.
Increased focus on state judiciaries has significant potential to improve the criminal legal system. Recognizing the need for evaluation metrics for judges, this report pioneers a data-driven, evidence-based approach to assessing the judiciary. We analyze written appellate decisions to quantify individual trial court judges' decisions and impacts. This methodology transforms complex judicial texts into accessible data, creating metrics of judicial performance for use by policymakers and the public. This report introduces ‘excessive sentence findings’ as a method to assess individual judges’ decisions and their impact. In New York, appellate courts review sentences for excessiveness and can reduce them in the “interest of justice,” a rare and clear signal—from highly respected institutional actors—that a lower court judge made an exceptionally troubling choice. We identify lower court judges with sentences reduced by appellate courts for being excessive and calculate the total number of years reduced from those sentences. The study reveals patterns of repeated excessive sentencing by several specific judges, raising questions about judicial accountability in New York.
Key Findings:
Sixty-five lower court judges were found to have engaged in excessive sentencing more than once between 2007 and 2023.
The 12 judges with five or more most excessive sentence findings had their sentences reduced by a total of 1,246 years.
Two judges had a total of 39 excessive sentence findings between them, with the appellate court reducing a total of 684.5 years from the sentences they imposed.
Recommendations:
New York’s court system should increase its transparency by releasing detailed, judge-level sentencing data.
New York’s court system should publish annual reports summarizing excessive sentence findings and detailing the judges involved, the legal arguments made, and the appeal outcomes.
New York: The Authors, 2024. 32p.
