November 21, 2023  

Maryland Certiorari Statistics, 2021 and 2022 Terms

By Steve Klepper

For several years, I’ve tracked the Supreme Court of Maryland’s petition docket. The judiciary’s annual statistical reports give the overall grant rate for civil and criminal certiorari petitions. Because unrepresented (pro se) parties file the majority of petitions each year, 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 2021 Term (petitions docketed 3/1/2021 to 2/28/2022) and 2022 Term (3/1/2022 to 2/28/2023),[*] alongside the statistics for the 2020 Term (petitions filed 3/1/2020 to 2/28/2021) for comparison.

My goal is to give practitioners a fair sense of a petition’s generic odds. To that end, I make a few judgment calls:

  • I count only petitions filed through counsel.
  • I exclude juvenile petitions, because the dockets are not publicly available.
  • I exclude petitions that were dismissed, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
  • I exclude two civil petitions (Nos. 386 and 387) still pending from the 2022 Term.
  • If several petitions are from the same Appellate Court opinion but are assigned separate docket numbers, I count them as one petition. For example, in the 2022 Term the Court denied 31 petitions (Nos. 388 to 418) from the same unreported opinion. Counting them as 31 denials would paint a less accurate picture of a petition’s generic chances.
  • For similar reasons, I exclude petitions when it appears that the Court held them for consideration, pending a decision in a case raising the same issue. In some terms, especially the 2020 and 2021 Terms, including such petitions would paint a less accurate picture of a petition’s generic odds.

A few caveats:

  • Correlation does not imply causation.
  • Each petition rises or falls on its own merits (except when the Court withholds consideration, pending resolution of a case raising a common issue).
  • My data-collection efforts are not perfect.

A few observations:

  • There was a significant drop-off in petitions filed through counsel in the 2022 Term.
  • There were only 43 criminal petitions last term, a lingering effect of the halt to jury trials during the COVID emergency.
  • Unless the pace picks up, the 2023 Term (ending 2/28/2024) will see even fewer total petitions. It’s is on pace for about 50 criminal petitions filed through counsel (a slight increase) but only about 90 on the civil side.
  • Whether the Appellate Court reported its opinion remains the best way to gauge the odds of a grant in your case, if you don’t work in the Office of the Attorney General. When a precedential decision is involved, a civil petition has about even odds, and a criminal petition has about two-in-three odds over the last three terms.
Civil Petitions Filed Through Counsel2022 Term2021 Term2020 Term
Overall20% (22/112)26% (35/133)21% (29/138)
Filed by State57% (4/7)33% (1/3 )100% (1/1)
Filed by Locality60% (3/5)83% (5/6)29% (2/7)
Filed by Private Counsel, for Private Party17% (18/105)23% (29/124)19% (25/130)
Bypass Petitions83% (5/6)43% (3/7)50% (3/6)
From Reported ACM Opinion45% (10/22)67% (18/27)46% (13/28)
From Unreported ACM Opinion6/63 (10%)17% (14/82)10% (9/87)
From ACM Opinion That Drew a DissentN/A0% (0/1)33% (1/3)
Criminal Petitions Filed Through Counsel2022 Term2021 Term2020 Term
Overall33% (14/43)26% (18/70)30% (25/82)
Filed by State100% (3/3)100% (3/3)78% (7/9)
Filed by Office of the Public Defender41% (7/17)24% (7/29)26% (8/31)
Filed by Private Counsel17% (4/23)21% (8/38)22% (9/41)
Bypass Petitions50% (1/2)N/A0% (0/1)
From Reported ACM Opinion8/9 (89%)60% (9/15)62% (8/13)
From Unreported ACM Opinion17% (5/29)12% (6/50)24% (15/63)
From ACM Opinion That Drew a Dissent67% (2/3)100% (1/1)100% (3/3)

[*] I neglected to do a post last year, which I discovered when drafting yesterday’s post.

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