Legal Terms
Acquitted: A case is acquitted when a judge or jury at trial determines that the defendant is not guilty of the crime for which the individual has been charged.
Arraignment: An arraignment is usually the first court data in a criminal case. At arraignment, a defendant finds out what they are charged with and what rights they have. If they cannot afford an attorney, the judge can appoint one for them.
Arrest: Law enforcement takes an individual into legal custody in response to the suspicion of an individual’s violation of the law. Law enforcement uses the standard of “probable cause” to determine whether an individual should be arrested, given information provided by witnesses or other evidence.
Bail or bond: The amount of money or conditions set by the court for the release of a person accused of a crime. It is designed to assure the person's presence for trial and provide for community safety while the case is pending.
Beyond a reasonable doubt: The legal burden of proof required to convict a defendant in a criminal case at trial. The prosecution bears the burden of proving that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt – in other words, that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented.
Case: A case is a collection of all charges against a defendant arising out of a single incident. In this dashboard, cases are classified by their most serious charge (the crime that a defendant is accused of committing).
Crime: An act prohibited by statute.
Continuance: Action by the Court to grant a delay to the proceedings until a later date.
Conviction: The outcome of criminal case when a defendant is determined to be guilty of a crime.
Defendant: The person against whom a criminal case is pending.
Dismissed: A case is dismissed when all the criminal charges in the case are terminated after the case is filed, either by the court or by the prosecutor. There can be several reasons for why a case is dismissed, including: a lack of evidence or unavailability of a witness or as part of a plea agreement. This category also includes cases that are referred to diversion and successfully complete diversion programming.
Disposition: The resolution of a case, which may include dismissal, diversion, acquital, or a conviction through guilty plea or trial.
Diversion: Diversion is an alternative solution that can take many forms, but it usually involves a suspension of formal criminal proceedings against a defendant, where after completion of certain conditions (such as treatment that addresses the underlying causes of criminal behavior), the defendant has their charges dismissed.
Enhanceable offense: Convictions of certain offenses, such as Domestic Violence or OVI, can serve to enhance a future charge. If you are convicted of an enhanceable offense and are charged again in the future, the new charge could be a higher level of offense based on the prior conviction.
In custody: When an individual is being detained by law enforcement, the court, or another legal entity and is not free to leave.
OVI: Operating vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs, a charge under R.C. § 4511.19; also referred to as a DUI or DWI in some other jurisdictions.
Plea agreement: an agreement between the prosecution and the defendant defining the specific conditions and crimes to which a defendant chooses to plead guilty or no contest.
Pretrial detention: Defendants who are detained pretrial are incarcerated in jail prior to resolution of the case.
Probation: A sentence to supervision of a defendant in the community involving standard terms and conditions, as well as special conditions imposed by a court.
Victim: A victim is any person against whom a criminal offense is committed, or who is directly and proximately harmed by the commission of the offense.
Charge Levels
Misdemeanor: Misdemeanors are less serious criminal violations of Ohio state laws, punishable by a sentence of up to 180 days in county jail and a fine of not more than $1,000. A misdemeanor is more serious than an infraction but less serious than a felony. A person convicted of a misdemeanor cannot be sentenced to state prison, unless the misdemeanor sentence is served simultaneously (concurrently) with a felony sentence. The City of Toledo Prosecutor’s Office only handles misdemeanors. Misdemeanors cover a wide range of offenses, including driving under the influence, domestic violence, and crimes against people and property.
Charge Types
Person: Includes crimes that involve physical harm to a person, such as homicide, rape, sex offenses, assault, domestic violence, child abuse, kidnapping, human trafficking, false imprisonment, stalking, neglect, or robbery.
Property: Includes crimes that involve harm to property or are financial in nature, such as burglary, car theft, hit and run, and many theft related crimes.
Drug: Includes crimes that involve controlled substances, such as all crimes related to possession, possession for sale, and sale of illegal drugs.
OVI/Vehicle: Includes crimes that involve driving under the influence, hit and run, and other vehicle-related crimes such as careless driving, driver’s license violations, leaving the scene of an accident, reckless driving, and other vehicle/traffic charges.
Domestic Violence: Includes crimes that involve ORC statute 2919.25, domestic violence.
Violent: Includes crimes that involve physical harm to a person, such as murder, attempted murder, assaults, many domestic violence crimes, and many sexual assault related crimes.
Weapon: Includes crimes that involve the possession or use of a weapon, such as possession of a weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, or other weapons charges.
Public Order/Other: Includes all other crimes, such as contributing to the delinquency of a minor, bribery or tampering, retaliation against judge/prosecutor, disorderly conduct, false report/emergency, escape, or violations of an order of protection.
Dispositions
Acquitted: A case is acquitted when a judge or jury at trial determines that the defendant is not guilty of the crime for which the individual has been charged.
Convicted: A case is convicted when a defendant is found guilty.
Dismissed: A case is dismissed when all the criminal charges in the case are terminated after the case is filed, either by the court or by the prosecutor. There can be several reasons for why a case is dismissed, including: a lack of evidence or unavailability of a witness or as part of a plea agreement. For purposes of the dashboard, this category includes Nolle Prosequi and Off Docket cases.
Demographics
Age: Defendant and victim age is calculated at the time the case is filed.
Gender: Gender is classified, as determined by law enforcement, in the following categories: Male, Female, Other.
Ethnicity: For purposes of these indicators, ethnicity is defined as Latino/a or non-Latino/a.
Race: Race is defined as the racial category as determined by law enforcement in the following categories: Asian, Black, Latino/a, and White.
Data Terms
Average: The average of a set of numbers is the sum of the numbers divided by the total number of values in the set. For example, to find the average of 24, 55, 17, 87 and 100, first find the sum of the numbers: 24 + 55 + 17 + 87 + 100 = 283 and divide by 5 to get 56.6.
Median: The median is the value separating the higher half of a data sample from the lower half. It may be thought of as the "middle" value of a data set. For example, in the data set 9, the median is 6, the fourth number in the sample.
Outlier: An outlier is a data point that differs from other observations, is much bigger or much smaller.
Methods
This dashboard aggregates data from the Toledo Municipal Court
We present data in two sections, summarizing information about different parts of the prosecution process: filings and dispositions. In each section, we present general trends and an overview of cases and characteristics.
In each of these, we present data at the case-level, meaning that we present information about each case rather than about each charge. This also means that we do not present information about individual defendants, but about individual cases; the same defendant may appear in the dashboard for multiple cases. This requires some aggregation up to the case-level, meaning that we take information about all charges and dispositions in a case and use that to make a statement about the case as a whole.