Compulsory Jury Trial

THE SUPREME COURT

Charged on 30 counts of using the U.S. mails to swindle amateur song writers, Mortimer Singer of Los Angeles sought to waive jury trial in a federal district court on the theory that he would do better if tried by a judge alone. The prosecutor refused. Found guilty by a jury, Singer got three years and a $4,250 fine. He appealed to the Supreme Court. Since the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to jury trial in federal criminal cases, he argued, it also guarantees the right to waiver.

Speaking for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Warren utterly rejected Singer's "bald proposition." The Constitution, he said, provides for no more and no less than "impartial trial by jury." To its framers, in fact, jury trial was such a vital shield against oppression that some of them regarded it as the only permissible way of determining guilt. Not until 1930 did the Supreme Court rule that defendants can waive jury trial in federal criminal cases but then only with permission of both judge and prosecutor.

Singer argued that a defendant can act in his best interests, but Warren ruled that "the ability to waive a constitutional right does not ordinarily carry with it the right to insist upon the opposite of that right." When the prosecutor insisted on jury trial, Singer wound up with "the very thing that the Constitution guarantees him."

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