" They have to reside within a number of miles of DC."
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I didn't realize that. Well, no wonder...
That is what another person said on this thread. Not sure if it is true.
Suppose there were two rogue judges on this court. Judges who would reject every wiretap. Every time a 3-judge panel was formed, those judges would vote to at least modify the request. Furthermore, suppose that approximately half of the 5645 requests since 2001 were in the 2003-4 era. So, suppose there were 3000 requests in the high-rejection era (early part of 2001 would be slow).
If we chose a panel at random, the probability that you would get one of these rogue judges is 0.0545.
Multiply this by 3000 and you get 164 -- very close to the number of rejections in this era.
I am conjecturing that nearly all the modifications and rejections resulted from the same two judges being on the panel
God I love this place.