A New Year's tradition for law geeks

True law nerds know that we all get to kick off every new year with the annual end-of-year report from the Chief Justice of the United States.  Thanks to Lyle Denniston's post here, you can read a summary of CJ Roberts' report and access the full 15-page document here.  As Lyle notes, the "appendix to Roberts' report contains some interesting details about the impact on the lower federal courts of the Court's major decisions on criminal sentencing, U.S. v. Booker and Blakely v. Washington."

Here are some of the sections Lyle is referencing:

Nationwide, the number of criminal appeals dropped by 5% to 15,246 filings, after rising by 28% in 2005 in response to the Booker decision.  Despite that decline, the number of criminal appeals in 2006 surpassed by more than 25% the number of filings in the years before the Court's decision in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004)....

The number of criminal cases filed in 2006 decreased by 4% to 66,860 cases and 88,216 defendants. The decline stemmed from shifts in priorities of the United States Department of Justice, which directed more of its resources toward combating terrorism. The number of criminal cases filed in 2006 is similar to the number of cases filed in 2002, when criminal case filings jumped by 7% following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  Although the number of criminal case filings declined in 2006, the median time for case disposition for defendants climbed from 6.8 months in 2005 to 7.1 months in 2006. The median time period, which was 27 days longer than in 2004, reflected an increase in the time that courts needed to process post-Booker cases.