Right to jury trial

“ A trial without a jury would be a violation of your constitutional rights. Of course, there are a few minor offenses, misdemeanors, and violations [pg 113] of city ordinances, which are sometimes tried without a jury, but in all infamous crimes, for which life may be taken as punishment or for which a person may be sent to the penitentiary, every one is entitled to a trial before a jury.
Is not this a sacred right? Don't you think that it is wise to permit people to have their rights and wrongs determined by a body of plain, honest men? ”

“ The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. ”

“ Every trial lawyer and every trial judge knows that jury verdicts are not logical products, and are due to considerations that preclude accurate guessing or logical deduction. Insofar as state cases speak of the jury's silence as an 'acquittal,' they give a fictional description of a legal result: that when a defendant is found guilty of a lesser offense under an indictment charging a more serious one, and he is content to accept this conviction, the State may not again prosecute him for the greater offense. ”

“ In isolated instances recalcitrant or irrational juries may acquit rather than apply the law to the case before them. Our system has wrestled with this problem for hundreds of years, however, and important safeguards have been devised to minimize miscarriages of justice through the malfunctioning of the jury system. Perhaps to some extent we sacrifice efficiency, expedition, and economy, but the choice in favor of jury trial has been made, and retained, in the Constitution. We see no sound reason in logic or policy not to apply it in the area of criminal contempt. ”

“ Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a "palladium of liberty" a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.
But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. ”

“ The Court has held, properly I think, that in an adversary process it is a requisite of fairness, for which there is no adequate substitute, that a criminal defendant be afforded a right to counsel and to cross-examine opposing witnesses. But it simply has not been demonstrated, nor, I think, can it be demonstrated, that trial by jury is the only fair means of resolving issues of fact.
The jury is of course not without virtues. It affords ordinary citizens a valuable opportunity to participate in a process of government, an experience fostering, one hopes, a respect for law. ”

“ Nothing in the Sixth Amendment as construed by our prior decisions indicates that a defendant's right to a jury trial would be infringed where an appellate court invalidates one of two or more aggravating circumstances found by the jury, but affirms the death sentence after itself finding that the one or more valid remaining aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating evidence. Any argument that the Constitution requires that a jury impose the sentence of death or make the findings prerequisite to imposition of such a sentence has been soundly rejected by prior decisions of this Court. ”

“ The right to trial by jury in a criminal case is twice guaranteed by the Constitution. It is common knowledge that the fear that jury trial might be abolished was one of the principal sources of objection to the Federal Constitution, and was an important reason for the adoption of the Bill of Rights. ”

“ Although the Constitution does not in terms give defendants an option between different modes of trial, petitioner argues that the provisions relating to jury trial are for the protection of the accused. Petitioner further urges that since a defendant can waive other constitutional rights without the consent of the Government, he must necessarily have a similar right to waive a jury trial and that the Constitution's guarantee of a fair trial gives defendants the right to safeguard themselves against possible jury prejudice by insisting on a trial before a judge alone. ”

“ That case did not involve the conduct of the trial itself, for there we found that the conviction could not constitutionally stand because the jury had been infected by prejudice before the actual trial proceedings had commenced. But what the Court said in that case is controlling here:
'In essence, the right to jury trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, 'indifferent' jurors. The failure to accord an accused a fair hearing violates even the minimal standards of due process. ”

“ The fifth amendment refers to the guaranty of indictment by a grand jury before a person shall be held to answer for a crime. The seventh amendment guarantees trial by jury in common law cases.
As I have stated earlier today, I cited a decision during this debate to show that criminal contempt is a crime. Since criminal contempt is a crime, a man charged with criminal contempt is entitled to a jury trial. I know of no way, under the Constitution, by which a man charged with a crime can be denied a trial by jury. ”

“ No question is raised about the death penalty itself or about the propriety of jury participation in its imposition, but confining the power to impose the death penalty to the jury alone is held to burden impermissibly the right to a jury trial because it may either coerce or encourage persons to plead guilty or to waive a jury and be tried by the judge. ”

“ This element is vital to the effective administration of criminal justice, not only in safeguarding the rights of the accused, but in encouraging popular acceptance of the laws and the necessary general acquiescence in their application. It can hardly be denied that trial by jury removes a great burden from the shoulders of the judiciary. Martyrdom does not come easily to a man who has been found guilty as charged by twelve of his neighbors and fellow citizens.
It is undoubtedly true that a judge can dispose of charges of criminal contempt faster and cheaper than a jury. ”

“ If the benefit of a trial by jury can in that way be taken away, it will take but little ingenuity on the part of lawmakers to provide for the total destruction of the right of trial by jury,-a right which has been considered of priceless benefit in all English-speaking nations, and the protection of which is imbedded in the national as well as state Constitutions. ”

“ There is no other safe mode to try these but by a jury. If any man had the means of trying another his own way, or were it left to the control of arbitrary judges, no man would have that security for life and liberty which every freeman ought to have. I presume that in no state on the continent is a man tried on a criminal accusation but by a jury. It was necessary, therefore, that it should be fixed, in the Constitution, that the trial should be by jury in criminal cases ”

“ The Constitution requires no more than that trials be fairly conducted and that guaranteed rights of defendants be scrupulously respected. From a constitutional standpoint we cannot conclude that it is impermissible for a State to consider that the compassionate purposes of jury sentencing in capital cases are better served by having the issues of guilt and punishment determined in a single trial than by focusing the jury's attention solely on punishment after the issue of guilt has been determined. ”

“ The right of the accused to be heard upon the facts to the jury, is not more his right, than the right of being heard upon the law to the jury. To deprive him, then, of the privilege of being heard upon the law to the jury, is as much a violation of his rights, as to deprive him of the privilege of being heard upon the facts to the jury.
The second, third, and fourth articles, exhibited by the House of Representatives, charge the defendant with a course of conduct upon a particular trial which affords many grounds of accusation. ”

“ But we are asked here to hold that an accused person cannot waive trial by jury, no matter how freely and understandingly he surrenders that right, unless he acts on a lawyer's advice. In other words, although a shrewd and experienced layman may, for his own sufficient reasons, conduct his own defense if he prefers to do so, nevertheless if he does do so the Constitution requires that he must defend himself before a jury and not before a judge. ”

“ The fact that these judgments may vary across cases is an inevitable consequence of the jury trial, that cornerstone of AngloAmerican judicial procedure. But when a punishment is authorized by law—if you kill you are subject to death— the fact that some defendants receive mercy from their jury no more renders the underlying punishment “cruel” than does the fact that some guilty individuals are never apprehended, are never tried, are acquitted, or are pardoned. ”

“ Besides, it would be practically impossible to maintain government on such principles; for no government could enforce its civil judgments, unless it could support them by criminal ones, in case of resistance. A jury must therefore be paramount to legislation in both civil and criminal cases, or in neither. If they are paramount in neither, they are no protection to liberty. If they are paramount in both, then all legislation goes only for what it may chance to be worth in the estimation of a jury. ”

“ If a court fails to permit a defendant to take all reasonable steps to ensure impartial jury deliberations, it undermines the legitimacy of the capital sentencing process and of the legal system itself. By refusing to permit Potts to explore the jurors' prejudices with respect to parole, the court seriously undermined his fundamental right to an unbiased jury.
It is a commonplace that a criminal defendant (and the state) is entitled to a jury that will follow the law as embodied in the trial judge's instructions. ”

“ And of course this constitutionally established power of a jury to determine guilt or innocence of a defendant charged with crime cannot be taken away by Congress, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part. Obviously, a necessary part of this power, vested by the Constitution in juries (or in judges when juries are waived) , is the exclusive right to decide whether evidence presented at trial is sufficient to convict. ”

“ In some States the judge cannot charge the jury at all except where the parties request him to instruct, so jealously is the right of trial by jury regarded, leaving to the 12 fellow countrymen, 12 peers of the defendant, the authority to decide the case.
I wish to quote further from Associate Justice Brennan:
The jury is a symbol to Americans that they are bosses of their Government. They pay the price, and willingly, of the imperfections, inefficiencies, and, if you please, greater expense of jury trials because they put such store upon the jury system as a guaranty of their liberties. ”

“ The less rigorous enforcement of the rules of evidence, the greater informality in trial procedure-these are not the only advantages that the absence of a jury may afford to a layman who prefers to make his own defense. In a variety of subtle ways trial by jury may be restrictive of a layman's opportunities to present his case as freely as he wishes. And since trial by jury confers burdens as well as benefits, an accused should be permitted to forego its privileges when his competent judgment counsels him that his interests are safer in the keeping of the judge than of the jury. ”

“ A defendant's only constitutional right concerning the method of trial is to an impartial trial by jury. We find no constitutional impediment to conditioning a waiver of this right on the consent of the prosecuting attorney and the trial judge when, if either refuses to consent, the result is simply that the defendant is subject to an impartial trial by jury-the very thing that the Constitution guarantees him. ”

“ I can see no basis whatsoever in the language of the Constitution for allowing persons like appellant the benefit of those rights and yet denying them a jury trial, a right which is surely one of the fundamental aspects of criminal justice in the English-speaking world. ”

“ Obviously this argument reflects substantial disrespect for the institution of trial by jury, although this method of trial is-and has been for centuries-an integral and highly esteemed part of our system of criminal justice enshrined in the Constitution itself. Nothing concrete is ever offered to support the innuendo that juries will not convict the same proportion of those guilty of contempt as would judges. ”

“ If congress has the power to deprive the defendant of his right to a trial by jury for one trial, and to put him, if convicted, to an appeal to another court, to secure a trial by jury, it is difficult to see why it may not also have the power to provide for several trials by a court, without a jury, on several successive convictions, before allowing a trial by a jury. ”

“ A jury may be waived; a single judge may hear the cause; and yet he must rule out of consideration whatever would have been inadmissible if it had been made the subject of a jury trial.
Much that in other countries is helpful in reaching a just conclusion is in this manner shut out in American courts. A man of the highest character, for instance, may say before twenty listeners that he saw a certain person shoot and kill another, and state how the whole thing happened. The person thus accused is sued for damages under a statute permitting such a remedy by the representatives of the man shot. ”