Since January, the Court has rendered just shy of 50 Opinions in matter-of-right criminal cases, which should be a sufficient sample size to run a few numbers.

In the 49 rendered Opinions, the SCOKY has:

Affirmed the underlying judgment in 81.6% (40) of the Opinions

Affirmed the underlying judgment unanimously (as to result) in 73.5 % (36) of the Opinions.

Flat-reversed or reversed-and-remanded the entire case in 12.2% (6) of the Opinions.

Partially reversed the judgment in another 6.12% (3) cases).

Justices have dissented from the result (either with or without separate opinion) in 9 of the 49 Opinions. Justice Scott has been the most frequent dissenter in these cases, and has written or joined 4 dissenting opinions (all in cases where the majority of the Court voted to reversed the judgment below). Dissenting from 3 Opinions have been Justices Cunningham (1 from an “affirm” Opinion, 2 from “reverse” Opinions), Minton (1/2), Noble (2/1), and Schroder (3/0). Justice McAnulty has dissented from 2 Opinions (1/0/1). Chief Justice Lambert has not dissented from any of the 49 Opinions in the matter-of-right criminal cases.

For what it’s worth, the Court affirmed unanimously with respect to the other 3 Opinions rendered in matter-of-right appeals (all appeals from denials of writs by the Court of Appeals),

What, if anything, these statistics mean is anyone’s guess. SCOKYBLOG will endeavor to keep track and update these statistics after the August Renditions and again at the end of the year.

After correctly predicting the results in Commonwealth v. York and in the Autry v. WKU cases, SCOKYBLOG stubbed its toe on Clark v. Commonwealth. Although hedging its bets as much as possible, SCOKYBLOG ultimately predicted a split decision affirming the conviction. The Court however, ultimately rendered a split decision reversing the conviction (in part upon an issue that SCOKYBLOG didn’t give a snowball’s chance in hell of securing a reversal). Although its collective head had swelled with the 2-for-2 start, SCOKYBLOG never realistically anticipated that it would run the table. Oral arguments are just the starting point of the Court’s deliberation process, and, as it turned out, the record in this case turned out not to permit the Court to review the issue that occupied most of the Oral Argument. SCOKYBLOG has a couple of videos to review, and will get a couple more predictions up before the June rendition date. Hopefully, we can make it to the July break still above .500.