National Prosecutors Survey, 1990

This survey queried chief prosecuting attorneys of state
prosecutorial districts (district attorneys, commonwealth attorneys,
etc.) about the prosecution of felony cases within their jurisdictions
during 1989-1990. Questions regarding the prefiling, filing, and
pretrial stages of felony prosecution asked about policies limiting
the time for plea negotiations, the role of the grand jury, how felony
cases were screened, and the amount of time that usually elapsed
before the prosecutor was notified of persons arrested for a felony.
Prosecutors were also asked to report the percentage of court case
filings by grand jury indictment, by information following a
preliminary hearing, or by other means, and the percentage of felony
cases processed by a court of general jurisdiction, a felony court, or
other court(s). The trial stage of felony prosecution was covered by
questions about the conduct of voir dire examination of prospective
jurors, limits on time allowed to commence trial, the number of
permitted peremptory challenges, who was responsible for notifying
government witnesses to appear in court, whether the prosecution had
the right to request a jury trial, whether the jurisdiction's felony
court discouraged motions on trial date that would delay trial, and
whether the felony court normally granted a continuance on trial date
to permit additional time for plea negotiations. Questions on felony
sentencing and appeals asked whether the prosecutor was usually
present at felony sentence proceedings, whether the judge usually
ordered a presentence report, whether victim information was requested
or provided by the court, whether the prosecutor normally recommended
a type or duration of sentence to be imposed, whether police, victims,
or witnesses were notified of the disposition of felony cases, whether
the prosecutor was involved in various types of appellate work, and
whether the prosecutor had any right of appeal from rulings on
motions, from sentences, and from determination of guilt or
innocence. General information gathered by the survey includes the
number of jurisdictions contained in the prosecutorial district, the
number of attorneys and investigators employed in the sampled
jurisdiction and in the prosecutorial district as a whole, the length
of the prosecutor's term of office, the number of law enforcement
agencies that brought arrests into the jurisdiction's court, how much
of the prosecutor's felony caseload was assigned on a vertical basis,
the kinds of nonfelony matters the prosecutor had responsibility for
or jurisdiction over (e.g., family and domestic relations, mental
commitments, environmental protection, traffic, etc.), whether the
office of prosecutor was an elective position, and whether it was a
full- or part-time position. Other general items include whether any
felony defendants were provided an attorney on the grounds of
indigency, whether, in criminal cases involving both state and federal
jurisdiction, the prosecutor would ordinarily be cross-designated to
represent the prosecutor in both courts, whether the prosecutor's
office contained a "career criminal" unit, whether the state's
attorney general was entitled to try cases in the jurisdiction's
felony court, which types of criminal history data normally were of
practical value in felony prosecution, and who supervised the
probationer in most cases of adult felons sentenced to probation.