NCJ Number
141385
Journal
Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1992) Pages: 119-128
Date Published
1992
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article addresses the discrepancy between the constitutional texts' promise of a guarantee of a routine criminal jury trial and what the criminal justice system delivers.
Abstract
The effort of the framers of the Bill of Rights to embed jury trial as the exclusive mode of proceeding in cases of serious crime has been a spectacular failure. Rather than "all," a more accurate term to describe the use of jury trial in the discharge of the criminal caseload would be "virtually none." Currently, the criminal justice system in the United States now disposes of virtually all cases of serious crime without jury trial, through the plea bargaining system. This nontrial procedure, which has become the ordinary dispositive procedure of American criminal justice, operates by threat. Plea bargaining is coercive; it also suppresses the jury and the trial, prevents the citizenry from learning about the circumstances of the crime and punishment, and is dishonest. Much attention needs to be directed to the way criminal adjudication is handled. Concessionary nontrial procedure is wrong. It is necessary to reintroduce some component of genuine adjudication into America's criminal procedure, and, hopefully, when that step is taken, attention will be paid to the Constitutional model. 22 footnotes