first of all, there are quite a few bench trials, at least in the Seattle area. Mostly, however, for misdemeanors. For serious cases, lawyers seem to believe that the State having to convince all 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt is more difficult than convincing a single judge. We recommended bench trials for clients who were pretty likely to get convicted unless the prosecution screwed up somehow (witness wouldn’t come to court, evidence couldn’t get admitted, etc.). So, we’d set it for a bench trial, and hope something “good” happened. In one case, for example, the State failed to prove the age of the “victim” in a statutory rape case, and the judge acquitted by client. A jury might not have cared so much about the technical elements.
The other time to do it, even (or especially) is in serious cases where something about it is likely to really piss of a jury and you hope the judge can keep a professional demeanor and rationally evaluate the evidence. I had a vehicular homicide case where my client was a Native American in a pretty rural area reputed to be a bit racist towards Native Americans. He was admittedly driving drunk, and admitted hit and killed a white teenager. (related to the local sheriff) We thought it might be hard to get a jury to buy our argument that although the defendant was drunk and hit a pedestrian, the accident wasn’t the defendant’s fault. (the pedestrian darted in front of the car and caused the incident,not the drunk driving). We waived our right to a jury, and won the case.
Actually, an open question in some US jurisdictions whether the prosecution has a right to a jury trial in the defendant wants to waive his right to one. In reality, most prosecutors are more than happy to have a bench trial.
Which ones? I thought all the state constitutions guaranteed a defendant’s right to trial by jury and were silent on whether the prosecution has the right.
That is really interesting. My father-in-law once told me if I’m ever indicted of a crime and I’m guilty, I should go for a jury trial, and if I’m ever indicted and I’m innocent, I should go for a bench trial. My father-in-law was a county prosecutor.
But can you tell me where you heard or read the information quoted above?
When I was a civil defense lawyer exclusively when I was but a young lawyer and older lawyer explained to me that defendants in civil cases always want a jury because the plaintiff then has to convince nine out of twelve people, so don’t stipulate to a smaller jury. It is harder to meet the burden of proof with a jury. A criminal case makes it unanimous, which can be difficult. Although it is also my understanding that it is easier to throw off the one cranky juror than it used to be.
I heard that in relation to a trial of NYC police officers who accidently shot Amadou Diallo 41 times. The reference was to other similar cases, I don’t recall at the moment if those officers ended up with bench trials. After that I noticed other similar cases, including a rogue prosecutor in NJ. Otherwise, I don’t have anything solid, but am attempting to look for it.
I think it makes sense for members of the justice system community to seek a bench trial because a judge is more ‘peer-like’ to them than the average jury. But ‘jury of your peers’ refers to political peers, in this country all citizens of majority age and sound mind, not cronies. Most defendants don’t get to chose their coworkers to decide their fate.
Second, IANAL, but I can see good reasons for going either way. A high-profile child molestation case? Probably want to stick with a bench trial (judge dependent and assuming no change of venue) rather than risk the wrath of an angry community.
You might also prefer a hung jury because after one or two failed prosecutions the State might give up, or offer you a much more attractive plea deal. And if you’re out on bond during the trials, that’s time you’re more or less free. If not, then you’re likely earning time-served credit to be applied to any sentence you do eventually get. So there’s no real loss that I can see.
But that simply results in a hung jury. You’re not off the hook. Someone’s who’s in jail for the duration of the trial will simply be kept in jail
Sorry, I should have made it more clear that it was my observation that criminal cases don’t usually have bench trials. I can’t remember a criminal case with a bench trial.
Ok, gotcha on the 2nd part. Makes sense I guess
For the 1st part, does the prosecution give up often?
If you are charged with a crime and you are unable to make a deal with the prosecution then you must go to trial. And it is much easer to win your case with a Jury than a Judge. People are selected from a group and each side picks people that they think will help them win their case and gets a certain number of people they are allowed to get rid of for no reason without explanation. (Jury selection) So your Lawyer is able to convince these people that you are innocent while a judge only listens to facts because that is their job they don’t fall for bull. And people on a jury do. That is why a bench trial is most often never used even when the defendant is not guilty. There is still evidence from the prosecution that makes them look guilty.
Actually I would point out here that the South Asia experience. In all the countries there jury trials have been eliminated. The result? far less people actually get to trial, judges lean on prosecutors to ensure only those cases where the evidence points heavily to conviction are taken forward.
The simplistic, unnuanced, and probably mostly unfair answer is that the lawyers who represent people charged in criminal cases think they have a better chance (either of winning or getting a higher fee depending upon how bitter you want to be) with a jury rather than a judge.
The reason why this may or may not be so can be interpreted a great many ways.
But couldn’t that be to your advantage too? If one is accused of a particularly heinous crime, wouldn’t you want a judge that is probably used to dealing with cases with distasteful content rather than let the prosecution rile up the jury with inflammatory pictures and stories?
In theory, but there’s really only 2 probable scenarios:
it’s not a major offense, in which case you’re probably out on bail
it is a major offense, in which case being in jail while there’s a hung jury or two is a whole heck of a lot better than a conviction (especially if you’re the one about to get hung :))
The chances of being in jail awaiting trial for a minor crime aren’t very high.
I was in the jury pool for a trial of a third time child rapist (hey this is Massachusetts, you only serve four years for your second child rape, even if you do it right after you get out after serving 18 months for the first one!). The jury pool went through 94 jurors before they picked 16. The defense knocked out all by one of the 82 who were excused. That one actually knew the defendant. Basically if you gave any indication that you were disgusted by the crime, you were out. I was #47 on the list. I thought I was going to be called up for sure, but suddenly they selected #93 and #94 and we were done.
The 16 who were selected were all either as old as possible (well over 60 anyway) or really young men (I would guess under 25).
How did they determine if you were disgusted by the crime? You mean there were actually people who were told of it and said it didn’t bother them?? Did the other jurors look at them weird after that?
He/she was no doubt using shorthand for the actual question, which would have been along the lines of “do you feel that children sometimes, rarely, or never make false allegations about rape?” “Do you consider sexual abuse of minors to be an especially and uniquely heinous category of crime?” “Do you think that you would have a difficult time being objective to someone if the state introduced some evidence of sexual contact between an adult and a minor, even if there were other extenuating circumstances?” “Do you think adults who initiate romantic or sexual relationships with persons under the age of 18 are vile and incapable of being trusted or reformed?”
Someone upthread asked, why does it really matter, if your defense is you didn’t do it? It matters for a number of reasons. Not least of those is that technically that is rarely the defense – the State bears the burden (in the U.S.) of affirmatively establishing that you did do it – defendant’s job is merely to show “reasonable doubts” that the State has done its job of establishing this, and defendant is never required to “prove a negative” (which is impossible anyhow). Thus for instance in a drug case you might see an alibi, but that is tricky because criminal defendants rarely are advised to testify (for a lot of reasons, IMHO IBNLT the fact that they are guilty, if not of this crime, of something else, and/or are unsympathetic and not credible), and an alibi is hard if not impossible to establish through third party testimony. Just as frequently or more frequently, defense lawyer will simply attack the eyewitness or cops involved in the crime/bust and try to make them look incompetent, unreliable, inconsistent, racist, etc. Cops make hundreds of busts and aren’t the most literate of sorts so you can almost always find, ten months after the fact, some inconsistency, slip up in memory, bad paperwork – Judges have seen enough of these tangential inconsistencies to know that they rarely indicate a false arrest, and so would be only modestly impressed if at all by the arresting officers having notes where one of them said the observed dealer was about 6 feet tall and wearing a red cap and the other said he was 5’ 9" and the red cap was on the ground by the time the sale went down, but a jury might be duped into seeing this as a grave defect in the prosecution case, esp. when the last thing they hear is the instruction on reasonable doubt (to be fair the instruction will probably also caution “a reasonable doubt is not any doubt, it is instead such a doubt that would cause a reasonable person to have substantial uncertainty as to whether the element of the offense had in fact been committed as contended by the prosecution.”).
In general, you are correct. The problem is one of perception, as I tried to express in the next paragraph of my post - it can feel uncomfortable if you know you might draw a judge with a reputation for being a hard nut, and many people don’t like that. It seems too much like putting all your eggs in one basket. The actual outcome is not always as important as a defendant’s perceptions in these things.
When I was in secondary school (7th grade maybe?), we had a mock trial based on a vehicular homicide by a driver who may have been drunk. The law as was instructed to us was that if you are legally drunk and are driving a vehicle that is involved a collision resulting in a death, you are automatically guilty of vehicular homicide. That is certainly something that was specific thing to Michigan, and I’m unsure what the law is in other jurisdictions.
There ended up being a hung jury because many of the jury believed that the requirements of the statute were proven by the prosecution, but a couple refused to believe that the incident was the fault of the driver. I can definitely see jury nullification coming into play with the way the statute sets up automatic liability; the intention of the law is to bring harsh potential penalties to those driving drunk, but does so in a way that is quite unfair when a situation occurs where even a sober driver would not be able to avoid the collision and death.