GlossaryReports, outcomes, and case status
Court disposition
A court disposition is the recorded resolution of a court proceeding or charge, such as dismissal, acquittal, or conviction.
A court disposition is the recorded resolution of a court proceeding or charge, such as dismissal, acquittal, or conviction. It tells the reader how a matter was resolved at that stage. Its scope matters: one entry may describe a single charge, while another summarizes an entire case.
Reading the outcome
The California Department of Justice explains disposition information through outcomes including dismissal, conviction, and acquittal. In a court record, read the outcome together with the charge, date, and court that entered it.
A case can contain several charges. A summary field may therefore leave out important differences between their outcomes. It is also useful to distinguish a resolution from a scheduled hearing or an indication that a matter remains pending. A calendar entry is not necessarily the decision itself.
Example
Hypothetical example: A case contains two charges. The docket records that one was dismissed and the other ended in a guilty plea. A case-summary export displays “conviction.”
That summary does not mean both charges resulted in convictions. The charge-level entries provide the more precise account. A reader describing the case should preserve the distinction rather than apply one result to every allegation.
Common confusion
A dispatch disposition records how an emergency call was handled. A court disposition records a judicial outcome. The matching word does not make the two fields interchangeable.
Likewise, a law-enforcement clearance is a reporting outcome and does not establish a court conviction. An arrest entry is earlier-stage information, not a substitute for the court result.
Local records and updates
Check whether a dataset reports cases, defendants, or charges and whether it includes later amendments or appeals. California DOJ's documentation of missing court submissions illustrates why an absent disposition in a criminal-history repository cannot automatically be read as a still-pending case. The court record and the repository may update at different times.