The table below is a database of the over 4,200 jury trials (or cases where a jury was summoned) since July 1, 2017; earlier data is not available, but the Section will keep this sheet updated as new fiscal-year quarters of data are made available to us (there tends to be a lag of about six months between when a trial happens and when it appears on the sheet). Our highest thanks and praise go to the Administrative Office of the Courts for helping us compile this data.

When using the database, you can either sort (display everything in forward or reverse alphabetical/numeric order) or filter (display only certain values) the data using the columns.  For example, if you wanted to compare outcomes for civil plaintiffs in the First and Fourth Judicial Districts, you could click on the filter icon at the top of the “District” column and select “1st” and “4th,” and then click on the filter icon atop the “Case Category” column and select on “Civil”; you will then be looking at only civil cases from those two districts, and you can additionally sort the trials (in forward or reverse order) by case type, by the judge who presided over them, by the fiscal-year quarter when the trial occurred, or by case disposition. 

Note that this data includes a great many cases where the parties settled or otherwise dismissed their suits before trial; also note that there are inconsistences in the way case numbers are displayed — though you should be able to find any given case on SOPA, if you were to, say, narrow down the data to only cases of a certain type that your judge has tried recently — and in the way that the case types, charges, and dispositions are coded.  We have made some effort to clean this up, but these inconsistencies ultimately inhere in the reporting system as it currently exists, since many different employees from many different courts are reporting data from many different judges.  For this reason, we do not recommend relying on the database as comprehensive or to try to determine, for example, what the ‘average’ outcome of a given court, judge, or case type is.  Rather, the database is designed to help trial practitioners working on a case to find past cases (although, again, probably not all past cases) that their judge has tried, or that are the same case type and tried in their District, etc.  Last, note that a judge may occasionally be listed as presiding over a trial in a court that is not that judge’s home court; this happens sometimes when, e.g., an out-of-District judge is appointed or selected by the parties to preside over a case from which all of the forum District’s judges have recused themselves or been excused.

In the future, we intend to send out analyses of or interesting insights about this data to Section members, so join the Section today.  We also intend to add federal court data from the District of New Mexico. 

NM Trial Database