The increased diversity, he said, enriches the thinking of the whole court. But it can also accentuate what appear to be arbitrary results by individual judges within the system, he acknowledged. The analysis, conducted for the Mercury News by DMR Associates of Springfield, Va., an organization devoted to analyzing computer data for journalists, found that the disparities cover a range of circumstances. Some immigration courts as a whole are more lenient than others. Refugees from Sri Lanka, for example, who fly into San Francisco and have their cases heard there win asylum far more frequently than countrymen who fly into Los Angeles.
Some judges seem to favor some parts of the world more than others.
Take judges Mirlande Tadal in Elizabeth, N.J., and Craig M. Zerbe in Chicago, for example. Tadal granted asylum in 69 percent of the cases she heard from Yugoslavia, while Zerbe granted asylum in only 28 percent. But of Somali applicants, Zerbe granted asylum to 95 percent and Tadal only 39 percent. The gender of the immigration judges may make a difference. Almost no one, however, is tougher in granting asylum than the judge to whom Rugie Jallow was assigned, William Jankun, who in the period analyzed granted asylum in just 23 of the 1,569 cases he heard, 1.47 percent.