Singer v. United States, 42

CourtUnited States Supreme Court
Citation13 L.Ed.2d 630,85 S.Ct. 783,380 U.S. 24
Docket NumberNo. 42,42
PartiesMortimer SINGER, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES
Decision Date01 March 1965

Sidney Dorfman, Beverly Hills, Cal., for petitioner.

Miss Beatrice Rosenberg, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Rule 23(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides:

'Cases required to be tried by jury shall be so tried unless the defendant waives a jury trial in writing with the approval of the court and the consent of the government.'

Petitioner challenges the permissibility of this rule, arguing that the Constitution gives a defendant in a federal criminal case the right to waive a jury trial whenever he believes such action to be in his best interest, regardless of whether the prosecution and the court are willing to acquiesce in the waiver.

Petitioner was charged in a federal district court with 30 infractions of the mail fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1341 (1958 ed.). The gist of the indictment was that he used the mails to dupe amateur songwriters into sending him money for the marketing of their songs. On the opening day of trial petitioner offered in writing to waive a trial by jury '(f)or the purpose of shortening the trial.'1 The trial court was willing to approve the waiver, but the Government refused to give its consent. Petitioner was subsequently convicted by a jury on 29 of the 30 counts and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. We granted certiorari, 377 U.S. 903, 84 S.Ct. 1168, 12 L.Ed.2d 175.

Petitioner's argument is that a defendant in a federal criminal case has not only an unconditional constitutional right, guaranteed by Art. III, § 2, and the Sixth Amendment,2 to a trial by jury, but also a correlative right to have his case decided by a judge alone if he considers such a trial to be to his advantage. He claims that at common law the right to refuse a jury trial preceded the right to demand one, and that both before and at the time our Constitution was adopted criminal defendants in this country had the right to waive a jury trial. Although the Constitution does not in terms give defendants an option between different modes of trial, petitioner argues that the provisions relating to jury trial are for the protection of the accused. Petitioner further urges that since a defendant can waive other constitutional rights without the consent of the Government, he must necessarily have a similar right to waive a jury trial and that the Constitution's guarantee of a fair trial gives defendants the right to safeguard themselves against possible jury prejudice by insisting on a trial before a judge alone. Turning his attention to Rule 23(a), petitioner claims that the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments are violated by placing conditions on the ability to waives trial by jury.

We have examined petitioner's arguments and find them to be without merit. We can find no evidence that the common law recognized that defendants had the right to choose between court and jury trial. Although instances of waiver of jury trial can be found in certain of the colonies prior to the adoption of the Constitution, they were isolated instances occurring pursuant to colonial 'constitutions' or statutes and were clear departures from the common law. There is no indication that the colonists considered the ability to waive a jury trial to be of equal importance to the right to demand one. Having found that the Constitution neither confers nor recognizes a right of criminal defendants to have their cases tried before a judge alone, we also conclude that Rule 23(a) sets forth a reasonable procedure governing attempted waivers of jury trials.

I.

English Common Law. The origin of trial by jury in England is not altogether clear. At its inception it was an alternative to one of the older methods of proof—trial by compurgation, ordeal or battle. I Holdsworth, A History of English Law 326 (7th ed. 1956). Soon after the thirteenth Century trial by jury had become the principal institution for criminal cases, Jenks, A Short History of English Law 52 (5th ed. 1938); yet, even after the older procedures of compurgation, ordeal and battle had passed into disuse, the defendant technically retained the right to be tried by one of them. Before a defendant could be subjected to jury trial his 'consent' was required, but the Englishmen of the period had a concept of 'consent' somewhat different from our own. The Statute of Westminster I, 1275, 3 Edw. 1, c. 12, which described defendants who refused to submit to jury trial as 'refus(ing) to stand to the Common Law of the Land,' marks the beginning of the horrendous practice known as peine forte et dure by which recalcitrant defendants were tortured until death or until they 'consented' to a jury trial.

It is significant that defendants who refused to submit to a jury were not entitled to an alternative method of trial,3 and it was only in 1772 that peine forte et dure was officially abolished in England. By a statute enacted in that year, 12 Geo. 3, c. 20, a defendant who stood mute when charged with a felony was deemed to have pleaded guilty. Not until 1827, long after the adoption of our Constitution, did England provide by statute, 7 & 8 Geo. 4, c. 28, for the trial of those who stood mute. Even this statute did not give the defendant the right to plead his case before a judge alone, but merely provided that he would be subject to jury trial without his formal consent.

Thus, as late as 1827 the English common law gave criminal defendants no option as to the mode of trial. The closest the common law came to such a procedure was that of the 'implied confession,' described briefly in 2 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, c. 31 (6th ed. 1787), by which defendants accused of minor offenses did not explicitly admit their guilt but threw themselves on the King's mercy and expressed their willingness to submit to a small fine. Despite the 'implied confession,' the court heard evidence and could discharge the defendant if it found the evidence wanting. Griswold, The Historical Development of Waiver of Jury Trial in Criminal Cases, 20 Va.L.Rev. 655, 660 (1934). It cannot seriously be argued that this obscure and insignificant procedure, having no applicability to serious offenses, establishes the proposition that at common law defendants had the right to choose the method of trial in all criminal cases. On the contrary, '(b)y its intrinsic fairness as contrasted with older modes, and by the favor of the crown and the judges, (trial by jury) grew fast to be regarded as the one regular common-law mode of trial, always to be had when no other was fixed.' Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law 60 (1898).

The Colonial Experience. The colonies which most freely permitted waiver of jury trial as a matter of course were Massachusetts and Maryland. The 'First constitution' of Massachusetts—The Body of Liberties of 1641—contained as Liberty XXIX the following:

'In all actions at law, it shall be the liberty of the plaintiff and defendant, by mutual consent, to choose whether they will be tried by the Bench or by a Jury, unless it be where the law upon just reason has otherwise determined. The like liberty shall be granted to all persons in Criminal cases.'

It should be noted that Liberty XXIX's language explicitly provided that the right to choose trial by judge alone was subject to change 'where the law upon just reason has otherwise determined.' Moreover, those drafting and administering the Liberty recognized that it was a departure from the English common law. Grinnell, To What Extent is the Right to Jury Trial Optional in Criminal Cases in Massachusetts? 8 Mass. L.Q. No. 5, 7, 23—25 (1923). Several cases can be cited, at least up until 1692, in which defendants in Massachusetts waived jury trial and were tried by the bench. See Grinnell, supra, at 27—29; Griswold, supra, at 661—664. However, from 1692 on, in light of increasing hostility to the Crown, the colonists of Massachusetts stressed their right to trial by jury, not their right to choose between alternate methods of trial. Instead of being a settled part of the jurisprudence of Massachusetts at the time of the Constitutional Convention, the ability to choose between judge and jury had become a forgotten option in Massachusetts:

'With the state of mind then existing among the colonists, presumably nobody bothered about this question of any one's wanting to waive a jury. The General Court was then concerned with the question of a man's right to a jury when he asked for it, which they thought in danger. The 'Body of Liberties' never having been printed and the nineteen original official manuscript copies having doubtless been lost or forgotten, the 'bar' (which did not begin to develop until the beginning of the 18th century) and the 18th century people, probably grew up without any general knowledge of the expressly optional character of the right to a jury established as a 'fundamental' by the common law of Massachusetts in the colonial period.'4

It appears that from the early days of Maryland's colonization minor cases were tried by judges sitting alone. Bond, The Maryland Practice of Trying Criminal Cases by Judges Alone, Without Juries, 11 A.B.A.J. 699, 700 (1925). But the defendant who submitted his case to the judge was not considered on a par with the defendant who chose to have a jury hear his case, as is evidenced by a Maryland statute of 1793 which provided that submission to a judge would be considered an admission of crime (analogous to the 'implied confession' of minor offenses under English common law) at least insofar as to render the person submitting his case to a judge liable for the costs of prosecution. In 1809, Maryland declared by statute that waiver of jury trial was to be encouraged and the willing defendant was to suffer no increased liability for so...

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    ...that the rights of the People should be carefully considered in such a proceeding, the court quoted Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 85 S.Ct. 783, 790, 13 L.Ed.2d 630, as follows: "The Constitution recognizes an adversary system as the proper method of determining guilt, and The Govern......
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    ...carry with it the right to insist upon the opposite of that right, in this case a joint trial. See Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 34-35, 85 S.Ct. 783, 13 L.Ed.2d 630. The defendant further contends that once the court had granted the motion for a separate trial, it should have grante......
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  • Pleas
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