Juries, Democracy, and Petty Crime

As advocates push to expand the right to trial by jury in criminal cases, the Supreme Court should revisit the “petty offense” exception in light of the expansive web of collateral consequences that has developed in the past few decades. In Ramos v. Louisiana, the Court grappled with the question of stare decisis and overruled decades-old precedent on the constitutionality of non-unanimous jury verdicts, recognizing that the Court should be most willing to reconsider precedent in cases involving constitutional criminal procedure. At the same time, state legislatures should address the problem by extending the state right to jury trials to cover all criminal prosecutions. The implications of such changes would extend beyond a procedural reform that would affect the rights of individual defendants. Expansion of the jury trial right would constitute a meaningful structural reform in democratizing criminal justice at a time when such change is needed to establish the popular legitimacy of the criminal justice system.