Recent Statistics for Indiana Appellate Courts

Recently I attended an informative seminar on Indiana appellate court statistics. The presenters gave a brief history of the appellate courts, from the creation of the Supreme Court of Indiana in 1851 to the establishment by statute of the intermediate Court of Appeals.

After charting the historical changes in both jurisdiction and caseload over the years, the presenters turned to current data.

Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals writes just over 2,000 opinions every year. Most of the opinions involve criminal cases. In 2001, the Court of Appeals published 28% of its opinions. Last year the Court published only 18% of its opinions. In criminal cases, the Court of Appeals affirms approximately 85% of trial court decisions. Despite significant changes in criminal law and procedure over the years, this rate has remained stable.

The data revealed that oral arguments in the Court of Appeals remain rare. Since 2001, when the Court’s “Appeals on Wheels” program formally launched, oral arguments have only been held in roughly 3.3% of all cases.

What has not remained consistent? The grant rate for permissive (i.e., discretionary) interlocutory appeals. From 2012 to 2022, the grant rate remained stable at 46-47%. But since 2022, the grant rate has dropped to 27%. This is likely due to an ideological shift among the newer judges on the Court. Regardless, just over 1/4th of the petitions filed with the Court of Appeals are granted.

The presenters also provided statistics on individual judges. The judges authored on average 133 opinions and heard 11 oral arguments per judge each year. Judge Mathias wrote the most opinions in a year (179), and Judge Kenworthy heard the most oral arguments (19) in 2025. Judge Scheele, the newest member of the Court, wrote the fewest appeals (83), and Judge Bailey heard the fewest oral arguments (4).

Supreme Court of Indiana

Next the presenters provided statistics for the Supreme Court of Indiana. Overall, the chance of the Court granting a petition to transfer is 7%. The likelihood greatly increases if the opinion from the Court of Appeals is published. The transfer grant rate of a published opinion versus a memorandum decision is 19% versus 2.4%.

Which cases have the best change for success on transfer? Juvenile delinquency cases. In the last two years, the Supreme Court of Indiana has granted 19% of the transfer petitions filed in juvenile cases. But this is likely an outlier, as there were changes to juvenile law during that time period that impacted a significant number of people. That area of law also has several issues that have not been squarely addressed by the Supreme Court, making it fertile ground for transfer.

The majority of transfer petitions filed in the Supreme Court are filed in criminal cases. Yet the Court grants only 4% of the petitions filed. Thus, despite criminal cases dominating the filings, they win transfer at the lowest rate.

Who asks for transfer plays a significant role as well. Appellants who request transfer have only a 4% chance of success, while appellees have a 36% chance. If you are the appellee, you have a 9 times greater chance of transfer to the Indiana Supreme Court being granted. In fact, this was the strongest predictor of success for a transfer petition.

Why type of case has the lowest chance of success? Parental rights termination cases. Only 2% of the small number of petitions filed in termination cases are granted. In 2024 and 2025, the Supreme Court granted transfer in only one termination case.

The reasons for that are pretty clear to practitioners. The statutory law in that area has remained mostly unchanged for years, and constitutional challenges to statutory changes in the law are almost never raised and preserved for appeal.

Chief Justice Rush was far and away the most likely to vote for transfer, while Justice Massa was the least likely.

Regarding oral arguments, over 40% of the oral arguments held by the Court were held in cases where transfer had not yet been granted, although this happened more frequently when the case was a civil case.

As for timing, if you are given an oral argument by the Supreme Court and the Court grants transfer, the average time from the date of the argument to the opinion being handed down is 112 to 208 days (or roughly 4 to 7 months).

For appellate practitioners, these statistics reveal two things. First, when trial counsel contacts you about an interlocutory appeal, inform them that there is a less than 30% chance the request will be granted. So trial counsel should prepare for going to trial to preserve the issue for a direct appeal.

Second, given the small chance of success on a petition to transfer in a criminal case, getting to know what issues the Justices seem most interested in gives you the best chance for a grant. This requires reading all the Court’s opinions, obviously. But it also requires knowing what cases one or more justices voted to grant transfer on as well. Every week the Court publishes a spreadsheet indicating their votes on transfer petitions. The spreadsheet can be found here.

Sometimes the justices choose to publish their reasons for denying (or voting to grant) transfer. Those published orders can be found here.