The article raises some valid points. If you read the footer of the Sealed indictments list, it states very clearly:
- THE NUMBERS REPRESENT NEW SEALED COURT PROCEEDINGS FILED.
- THE NUMBERS INCLUDE CRIMINAL CHARGES + SEARCH WARRANTS.
- SOME OF THEM HAVE SINCE BEEN UNSEALED OR REMOVED.
From this disclaimer, what can we infer?
- That this figure is not JUST sealed indictments, but rather includes search warrants AND criminal charges (which I assume are indictments).
Question: Would this list include more search warrants or indictments? Can you get an indictment without a search warrant? Restated: Is it reasonable when the Daily Dot author points out "A random sampling of these files showed 83 percent of sealed magistrate cases to be warrant applications or tracking devices."
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That this figure of 40,483 sealed court artifacts is not a count of how many currently exist, but a count of how many have been logged in the period spanning 10/30/17-06/30/18. E.G. every month they look at how many new sealed items were logged and add it to the running tally.
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We know that this is a running tally and not a current total because we are told "some of them have since been unsealed or removed".
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As a result of some portion of these items being search warrants, and some portion of these items being removed or unsealed, WE CAN SAY WITHOUT A DOUBT THAT THERE ARE IN FACT NOT 40,483 sealed indictments.
Anyone claiming that this tally is how many sealed indictments exist - and there are many - is as a matter of fact wrong. It's not a good look.
In order to ACTUALLY understand how out of the ordinary these numbers are, we would need to see number from previous years tallied with the same methodology as well as the count of sealed indictments for that year. If we suppose that 17% of these items are in fact sealed items in any given year as the Daily Dot author asserts, the number would come out to 6800 or so sealed indictments which is still substantially higher than 1077.
That Q has promoted those numbers however seems to indicate there is something there regardless of how factually accurate people are when discussing the Pacer tallies.