(click to enlarge for a better view)
The number of appeals the Court decided dropped significantly under Chief Judge Judith Kaye--especially in the latter years of her tenure. The number rose considerably under Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman. But it then plummetted dramatically under Chief Judge Janet DiFiore. That number has now risen somewhat under Wilson, but it is not close to the earlier, pre-DiFiore figures.
(The eras refer to the respective years of each Chief Judge's tenure. As for"Early Kaye," that refers to the first several years of her tenure as Chief Judge, 1993-97; "Later Kaye" refers to the years thereafter when there was a significant reduction in the number of appeals decided by the Court, 1998-2008.)
Now let's look at some numbers regarding the criminal appeals alone. That sheds some insights.
For one thing, the number of requests made to the Court of Appeals to review criminal decisions of the lower courts has dropped over the years. In fact, the number of applications has dropped to less than half of what it was in the late 80's and early 90's, i.e., under Chief Judge Wachtler and for the first several years thereafter under Chief Judge Kaye:
(click to enlarge for a better view)
As shown in the graph, the number of Criminal Leave Applications (CLAs--i.e., petitions for the Court to review the criminal decision below) began to drop significantly in the last several years under Chief Judge Kaye. The drop began under Kaye in 2002, and it persisted thereafter--except during Chief Judge Lippman's tenure and the immediate post-Lippman years. That drop then accelerated under Chief Judge Janet DiFiore.
In short, fewer parties that lost in the courts below sought review in the state's highest Court beginning in 2002--again, except in the Lippman and immediate post-Lippman era. Why?
Well, it wasn't because of a sudden, coterminus drop in criminal convictions. Figures from the state's Division of Criminal Justice Services reveals that there has been a significant and continuous drop in the number of criminal convictions. But that began in 2010, not in 2002 when the number of CLAs began to drop. So, something else was going on at the Court of Appeals. Take a look at this:
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As shown in this graph, several years into the Kaye era, the Court began to accept fewer petitions (Criminal Leave Applications or CLAs) to review criminal decisions made by the courts below. Indeed, this reduction in the percentage of CLAs granted by Judges of the Kaye Court was quite dramatic beginning in the late 90's.
Then, more than a decade later, during the tenure of Kaye's successor, Chief Judge Lippman, the percentage of criminal cases being accepted for review increased. And this Lippman era increase was at least as dramatic as the Kaye-era reduction had been.
But the Lippman increase was short-lived. Under Lippman's successor, Chief Judge DiFiore, the CLA grants dropped again--and precipitously so. Today, this roller coaster, this rate of the Court's acceptance of criminal cases for review, has been rising somewhat under Chief Judge Wilson.
Here's another way to consider what has been happening with the Court of Appeals' criminal caseload:
(click to enlarge for a better view)
As shown in the above graph, the roller coaster in the number of criminal appeals actually decided by the Court of Appeals has, as would be expected, coincided rather closely with the roller coaster in the percentage of CLAs granted. Less than half as many criminal cases were decided by the Court in the later years of the Kaye era compared to the number early in her tenure and before that under Wachtler. That number then rose sharply under Lippman, only to fall again under DiFiore. Currently, under Wilson, the criminal caseload is rising a bit. But it is nothing like the criminal caseloads of the Lippman, early-Kaye, and Wachtler eras.
All of the foregoing may help to see that the Court's overall caseload--the total number of appeals it has been deciding, civil and criminal--closely mirrors the Court's criminal caseload. The fall and rise and fall again of the number of decisions rendered by New York's highest court has been happening at the same intervals as the number of its criminal decisions and, relatedly, the percentage of its CLA grants.
But that does not tell us what underlies these changes. We'll take a look at that in the next post.
But as a teaser, take a look at what the Court published in its most recent Annual Report. It published a record of the CLA decisions of each of the Court's members for 2025. More specifically, it revealed the number of petitions seeking review of criminal decisions below that were granted by each Judge on the Court. This is new. The Annual Reports did not publish these numbers previously.
[Remember, as Court of Appeals watchers know, as a matter of New York's criminal procedure law, CLAs are decided, granted or denied, by one Judge--NOT by the Court as a whole.]
Here are the figures published in the 2025 Annual Report:
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As shown in this table, there is a huge discrpancy in the rate at which the different Judges on the Court are granting CLAs--again, deciding to accept a criminal case for the Court of Appelas to review. How many criminal decisions, from courts below, are accepted for review by New York's high court, depends upon how many CLAs are granted by each Judge.
Just compare the number of CLAs granted by Wilson, Rivera, and Halligan with the number granted by Garcia and Singas. So, if more Judges are granting more CLAs, the Court's criminal caseload is going to be greater than if more Judges are granting fewer. As we'll discuss in the next post, that tells us a good deal about the roller coaster over the years in the Court's caseload.
