Election or Waiver of Jury Trial; Motions Relating to the Jury

• Author: Anthony G. Amsterdam/Martin Guggenheim/Randy A. Hertz
• Profession: University Professor and Professor of Law at New York University/Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law/Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law
• Pages: 415-424

415

CHAPTER 21

ELECTION OR WAIVER

OF JURY TRIAL;

MOTIONS RELATING TO

THE JURY

§ 21.01 The Right to Jury Trial in Juvenile

Delinquenc y Cases

In McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528 (1971), a majority of the Court held that juve-

nile respondents in delinquency proceedings do not possess a federal const itutional

right, under either the Sixt h Amendment or the Due Process Clause, to t rial by jury.

The plurality opin ion by Justice Blackmun, joined by three ot her Justices, concluded

that the “applicable due process standard” of “fu ndamental fairness” (id. at 543) doe s not

require juries because “one can not say that in our legal system the jury is a necessar y

component of accurate factfinding” (id. at 543); therefore “[t]he imposition of the jury

trial on the juven ile court system would not strengt hen greatly, if at all, the factf inding

function, a nd would, contrarily, provide an attrition of the juvenile court ’s assumed abil-

ity to funct ion in a unique manner” (id. at 547), converti ng “int imate, infor mal protec-

tive proceeding[s]” into “a fully adversary process,” id. at 545. Justice Harlan concur red

in the holding on the basis of his view that “criminal jury trials are not constitutionally

required of the States, either as a matter of Sixth Amendment law or due process.” Id. at

557. Justice Brennan, in a concurring and dissenting opinion, concluded that “the States

are not bound to provide jury t rials on demand so long as some other aspect of the pro-

cess adequately protects the interests that Sixth Amendment jur y trials are intended to

serve”—“to ‘protect the [juvenile] from oppression by the Govern ment,’ . . . and to pro-

tect him again st ‘the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge’ . . . [by] allow[ing] . . . what is

in essence an appeal to the com munity conscience.” Id. at 554. See generally Martin Gug-

genheim & Randy Hertz , Reflections on Judges, Juries and Justice: Ensuring the Fairness of

Juvenile Delinquency Trials, in Symposium on Juvenile Justice Reform, 33 Wa F L.

R. 553 (1998).

The States are, of course, free to enact st atutes granting a jury trial right to respon-

dents in delinquency proceedings. See McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. at 547; id. at 553