The Right to a Jury Trial

Nov 4, 2022 | Blog, Know Your Rights

When facing criminal charges you have the right to have a trial by jury. The justice system will offer you the right to a jury trial. It’s just a matter if you can afford that right. A jury trial with an attorney that is not a public defender can be costly. If you give up that right and take a plea deal you will not have a choice or chance to defend your rights and will be at the mercy of the deal you agreed to and the court.

“Hiring the right lawyer is the most important part of your case”

Kim W

Sixth Amendment

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay, the right to a lawyer,  the right to an impartial jury, and the right to know who your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you.  

It has been most visibly tested in a series of cases involving terrorism, but much more often figures in cases that involve (for example) jury selection or the protection of witnesses, including victims of sex crimes as well as witnesses in need of protection from retaliation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Source / Learn more…

STATE of MICHIGAN

STATE CONSTITUTION (EXCERPT)
CONSTITUTION OF MICHIGAN OF 1963

§ 14 Jury trials.

Sec. 14.

   The right of trial by jury shall remain, but shall be waived in all civil cases unless demanded by one of the parties in the manner prescribed by law. In all civil cases tried by 12 jurors a verdict shall be received when 10 jurors agree.

History: Const. 1963, Art. I, § 14, Eff. Jan. 1, 1964
Former Constitution: See Const. 1908, Art. II, § 13.

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The Right to a Trial by Jury

by Michael Komorn

If you or someone you know has been accused of a crime, DUI or Drugged Driving. Call Komorn Law and turn your defense into an offense.
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Amdt7.2.2 Identifying Civil Cases Requiring a Jury Trial

Seventh Amendment:

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

The Seventh Amendment grants a right to a jury trial in Suits at common law, which the Supreme Court has long interpreted as limited to rights and remedies peculiarly legal in their nature, and such as it was proper to assert in courts of law and by the appropriate modes and proceedings of courts of law.¹ The drafters of the Seventh Amendment used the term common law to clarify that the Amendment does not provide a right to a jury in civil suits involving the types of equitable rights and remedies that courts enforced at the time of the Amendment’s framing.²

Two unanimous decisions, in which the Supreme Court held that civil juries were required, illustrate the Court’s treatment of this distinction. In the first suit, a landlord sought to recover, based on District of Columbia statutes, possession of real property from a tenant allegedly behind on rent. The Court reasoned that whether a close equivalent to [the statute in question] existed in England in 1791 [was] irrelevant for Seventh Amendment purposes.³ Instead, the Court stated that its Seventh Amendment precedents require[d] trial by jury in actions unheard of at common law, provided that the action involves rights and remedies of the sort traditionally enforced in an action at law, rather than in an action at equity or admiralty.⁴ The statutory cause of action, the Court found, had several analogs in the common law, all of which involved a right to trial by jury.⁵

In a second case, the plaintiff sought damages for alleged racial discrimination in the rental of housing in violation of federal law, arguing that the Seventh Amendment was inapplicable to new causes of action Congress created. The Court disagreed: The Seventh Amendment does apply to actions enforcing statutory rights, and requires a jury trial upon demand, if the statute creates legal rights and remedies, enforceable in an action for damages in the ordinary courts of law.⁶

In contrast, the Court has upheld the lack of a jury provision in certain actions on the ground that the suit in question was not a suit at common law within the meaning of the Amendment, or that the issues raised were not particularly legal in nature.⁷ When there is no direct historical antecedent dating to the Amendment’s adoption, the court may also consider whether existing precedent and the sound administration of justice favor resolution by judges or juries.⁸

The Seventh Amendment does not apply to cases in admiralty and maritime jurisdiction in which the court conducts a trial without a jury.⁹ Nor does it reach statutory proceedings unknown to the common law, such as an application to a court of equity to enforce an administrative body’s order.¹⁰ For example, Congress, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, authorized an administrative agency to make findings of a workplace safety violation and to assess civil penalties related to such a violation. Under the statute, an employer that has been assessed a penalty may obtain judicial review of the administrative proceeding in a federal court of appeal.¹¹ The Supreme Court, in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission, unanimously rejected the argument that the law violated the Seventh Amendment because it authorized penalties to be collected from an employer without a jury trial:

At least in cases in which public rights are being litigated-e.g., cases in which the government sues in its sovereign capacity to enforce public rights created by statutes within the power of Congress to enact-the Seventh Amendment does not prohibit Congress from assigning the factfinding function and initial adjudication to an administrative forum with which the jury would be incompatible.¹²

On the other hand, if Congress assigns such cases to Article III courts, a jury may be required.

In Tull v. United States,¹³ the Court ruled that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury to determine whether an entity is liable for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act, which authorizes the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to initiate a civil action in a federal district court to enforce the Act. In the Court’s view, the penal nature of the Clean Water Act’s civil penalty remedy distinguishes it from restitution-based remedies available in equity courts.¹⁴ 

Consequently, it is a type of remedy that only courts of law could impose.¹⁵ However, a jury trial is not required to assess the amount of the penalty. Because the Court viewed assessment of the amount of penalty as involving neither the substance nor a fundamental element of a common-law right to trial by jury, it held permissible the Act’s assignment of that task to the trial judge.

Later, the Court relied on a broadened concept of public rights to define the limits of congressional power to assign causes of action to tribunals in which jury trials are unavailable.

As a general matter, public rights involve ‘the relationship between the government and persons subject to its authority,’ whereas private rights relate to ‘the liability of one individual to another.’¹⁶ In Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg,¹⁷ the Court held that Congress lacks the power to strip parties contesting matters of private right of their constitutional right to a trial by jury. 

The Seventh Amendment test, the Court indicated, is the same as the Article III test for whether Congress may assign adjudication of a claim to a non-Article III tribunal.¹⁸ Although finding room for some debate, the Court determined that a bankruptcy trustee’s right to recover for a fraudulent conveyance is more accurately characterized as a private rather than a public right, at least when the defendant had not submitted a claim against the bankruptcy estate.¹⁹

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