The numbers
Aggregate counts and rates: how many cases were filed, how they ended, and how long they took. These are figures a prosecutor's office with a modern case-management system should be able to produce in minutes.
Asked for twelve monthly felony-authorization counts, the office conceded the data exists, refused the arithmetic, and blamed the requester's own cost-saving clause.
A narrowed request for 2025 felony sex-offense charging records, granted in part and priced at $82.66 with a $41.33 deposit — while the office's own case-volume figures and its Karpel database go unaddressed.
Asked to count January's pleas, the office read two courts' dockets and answered 52 in 85 minutes, free — eight days after certifying that the same kind of aggregate did not exist and quoting $1,653.33 to build one.
Asked to count diversion cases, the office did not search and shrug. It narrowed “diversion” to a Probate Court programme it does not run, certified the record did not exist, and put three different arrival dates on one fax.
Asked to count deferred prosecution agreements, the office certified that no such record exists — then conceded the underlying data does, and priced it at $9,093.33 with a $4,546.66 deposit and a 270-day estimate.
Asked for records on how the migration affects FOIA responses, the office partly denied the request — then produced three memos to the Board that say the data ‘did not transition completely, or accurately,’ the old system is gone, and a commissioner’s cheaper fix was declined because ‘we don’t have time.’
Asked for a count of crime scenes a prosecutor attended, the office listed eight records, refused to reproduce them as duplicative, and never supplied the number. Every dated item on the list falls in 2024.
The office named eight responsive documents, produced none, and certified the number does not exist — while saying the number can be gleaned from the documents it will not hand over.
One number was requested. The office could not locate it, defined the key word itself, and then quoted $1,033.33 to let the requester count — on an invoice whose own arithmetic is $4.13 off.
How many cases were open the day the prosecutor took office? The office certified no record says. Then it priced the counting at $1,653.33 — on an 800-file baseline that its own companion letter, sent the same day, set at 500.
The office says no such record exists, then quotes $9,548 and a $4,774 deposit to search roughly 3,300 case files.
A count of convictions the office says does not exist, priced at $9,548. Then, seven days later, an amendment that quietly changed the volume figure behind the bill — and said nothing about why.
Denied twice: no document holds the total, and the reports the office points to leave eleven months of 2024 uncovered.
Forty-eight pages of GRANTED, and not one record enclosed. Instead: three cost itemizations totaling $34,673.79, an 8-employee office, a 6,000-file estimate, and an admission that two years of audits do not exist.
The office says it never kept plea-offer data, then bills $23,146.66 for a 4,000-file review its own footnote calls moot if the twin invoice is paid. The one thing it produced — 62 trials — it got from a calendar, not the files.
The office says no statistical report exists — then offers to compile the statistics for $34,720, using a case count it has never counted. Its own five-category backlog definition suggests the numbers are a query away.
Five years of plea and disposition data, denied three times as nonexistent — then priced at $19,840 to reconstruct by hand from 6,000 files the office's own database already indexes.
The office says it keeps no Brady/Giglio disclosure log — while its own 2024 policy orders six police agencies to report eight kinds of officer-credibility information to it. Then it quotes the same $74,520 it quoted seven weeks earlier.
Every Brady/Giglio statistic certified nonexistent. The policy manuals handed over free. And a $37,260 deposit demanded before anyone would look.
The bar raid was the subject. The reports test a trash pull and a traffic stop. The biggest confirmed quantity is 26.4 grams, not the four ounces the press described.
The office produced four Adult Case Tracking reports with 11/30/2023 run dates, withheld county reports as attorney-client, and certified performance reviews nonexistent.
Denied as nonexistent. Denied again as nonexistent. Then granted — for $13,248 and a 180-day wait. What the office produced instead were the court's statistics, not its own.
A request for 2024 forfeiture dockets in cases later dismissed or not convicted. Answer: a certificate of nonexistence, no search described, no exemption cited.
A ten-day extension for the “volume” of records, then a certificate that no records exist. No fee, no pages, no exemption cited.
A ten-day extension for the “volume” of records, then a certificate that no records exist. No fee, no pages, no exemption cited.
“Monthly summary does not exist,” certified — with a yearly screening table attached to the same letter. Then $2,815.20 for the underlying data, a $1,407.60 deposit, and 180 days.
Two of four items denied as nonexistent, then billed 118.1 hours to find dates the office said it did not have. The Board upheld it.
Deadline extended, then a $1,041.60 quote and a $520.80 deposit demanded before a single page is produced.
Three years of warrant counts by police agency released. Case-outcome and performance records: said not to exist.
