Maryland Certiorari Statistics, 2019 Term

By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)

For three years now, I’ve tracked the Court of Appeals’ petition docket. The judiciary’s annual statistical reports give the overall grant rate for civil and criminal certiorari petitions. Because the majority of petitions each year are filed pro se, however, the overall statistics are not terribly helpful for lawyers in advising their clients regarding the odds of certiorari.

Below are the statistics for the Court’s 2019 Term (petitions filed 3/1/2019 to 2/28/2020), alongside the statistics for the prior two 12-month periods for comparison.

My numbers do not include: pro se petitions; petitions that were dismissed or voluntarily withdrawn; or six still-pending petitions that are awaiting a Supreme Court decision on juvenile life sentences.

To reiterate the usual caveats:

• Correlation does not imply causation.
• Each petition rises or falls on its own merits.
• My data-collection efforts are not perfect.
• I’ve refrained from making judgment calls, such as whether to treat a group of related petitions as a single petition.