Stats on Stats on Stats (About Terrorism Convictions)

 

You've heard that hoary stat about how civilian courts have issued convictions in 400 terrorism cases. But that doesn't actually tell you all that much. Covinctions out of... how many cases? 

So I asked Karen Greenberg, director of NYU's Center on Law and Security to help me out here. According to Karen, if you count dismissals by either the judge or the government, the conviction rate in terrorism cases is 87 percent. If you don't, the rate is 95 percent.

That's compared to a 91 percent conviction rate (.pdf) for all criminal cases.

Initially, I asked about this wondering if the stats wouldn't be something like 98 percent or something -- in other words, an indication that maybe we counterintuitively have a kangaroo court system for civilian terrorism convictions. But the stats don't really bear it out. If the rate hovers around the 91 percent all-convictions rate, then if we have a problem with the fairness of convictions at all, it's hardly limited to terrorism. Score one for getting the data. 

And yes, this isn't exactly timely, but still. I don't need no hook for this shiiiiiiiiiit

Comments

[mikey]

I dunno. There's got to be some statistical impact on the outcome due to the careful selection of cases, both by type and by individual specificity.

I mean, a domestic terror trial, where a dude tries to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, the NY Cops arrest him, evidence is gathered, the DA prosecutes and achieves a conviction is a 'terrorism' case only on the basis of the charges. It's otherwise identical to any other criminal prosecution, and unless the DA is a full fledged idiot, the conviction rate should be quite high.

But when we think about 'terrorism' cases, with operators picked up around the world while supposedly advancing terror plots (based on evidence of widely varying quality), well, how many of those have we actually tried? David Hicks and Omar Khadr both pled out under a deal, and might have been problematic to try.

Most of the other detainees have either been released or are still being detained without trial. So, when you think about it, we really aren't learning anything from these numbers. I think that it's safe at this point to say that MOST detainees would plead to something to get out of Guantanamo.

If America ever takes responsibility for the people it's holding and allows some sort of due process to determine who might be proven guilty, and of what, and who might only be held on the flimsiest of pretenses, THEN we'll see how the system (whatever system that even turns out to be) functions in terms of fairness and effectiveness...