United States v. Woods, Crim. No. W-78-040.

• Decision Date: 10 May 1978
• Docket Number: Crim. No. W-78-040.
• Citation: 450 F. Supp. 1335
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Ben Berkley WOODS, Jr.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

450 F. Supp. 1335

UNITED STATES of America v. Ben Berkley WOODS, Jr.

Crim. No. W-78-040.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

May 10, 1978.

Russell T. Baker, Jr., U. S. Atty. for the Dist. of Md., Catherine C. Blake, Asst. U. S. Atty., Baltimore, Md., for plaintiff.

Howard J. Schulman, Baltimore, Md., for defendant.

WATKINS, Senior District Judge.

By an information filed on January 31, 1978 by the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland, defendant Ben Berkley Woods was charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor hereafter driving while intoxicated on national park land within the special territorial jurisdiction of the United States, as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 7, and in contravention of 36 C.F.R. § 50.28(c). Section 50.28(c) provides:

Driving motor vehicle while intoxicated. No person who is under the influence of intoxicating liquor . . . shall operate or drive a motor vehicle of any kind in any area covered by this part.

If convicted of a violation of this regulation, the defendant may be "punished by a fine of not more than $500 or imprisonment for not exceeding six months or both." 36 C.F.R. § 50.5(a). By his court-appointed attorney, Woods entered a Prayer for Jury Trial, Paper # 7, accompanied by a Memorandum in Support.¹ The United States Attorney resisted this request by filing a Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant's Prayer for Jury Trial, Paper # 9.

Because the penalty for the offense of driving while intoxicated does not exceed imprisonment for a period of six months, a fine of $500, or both, it falls within the definition of a "petty" offense as set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 1(3). In United States v. Morrison, 425 F.Supp. 1235 (D.Md. 1977), Judge Kaufman analyzed the various provisions applicable to the trial of petty offenses in the federal judicial system and found that they "combine negatively to indicate strongly that as to `petty offenses' the defendant is not given the right to a jury trial." Id. at 1238; see Comments by the Supreme Court upon its Promulgation of the Rules of Procedure for the Trial of Minor Offenses before United States Magistrates, 400 U.S. 1029, 1031-33 (1971) (Black, J., dissenting). More specifically, Judge Kaufman concluded that the Magistrates Rules

reveal a specific intent to reject any . . . nonconstitutional entitlement. In the face of that intent it would be inappropriate for this Court to exercise its discretion, assuming arguendo only that this Court possesses the same, to grant the defendant's jury trial demand.

425 F.Supp. at 1239. This Court agrees, for the reasons set forth in Morrison, that trial by jury is unavailable to a defendant charged with a petty offense, unless in a specific context a constitutional right to such a trial is found to exist.²Accord, United States v. Merrick, 459 F.2d 644, 645 & n.6 (4 Cir. 1972).

Therefore, the question presented for decision by this Court is: Does a defendant charged with driving while intoxicated in contravention of 36 C.F.R. § 50.28(c), with exposure to the possibility of six months incarceration, a $500 fine, or both, have a right to a trial by jury under the provisions of the United States Constitution?

Article III, § 2, cl. 3, of the United States Constitution guarantees that "the Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury . . .." The sixth amendment to the Constitution provides in part: "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 . . .."

The rationale underlying the inclusion of these provisions in the Constitution was eloquently stated by the Supreme Court in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968):

The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. . . . The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it. Beyond this, the jury trial provisions in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a fundamental . . . reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power . . . found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence.

Id. at 155-56, 88 S.Ct. at 1451 (footnote omitted). Based on this understanding that the right to a jury trial is the fulfillment of a basic purpose in the establishment of this nation, the Court concluded that "in the federal judicial system, a general grant of jury trial for serious offenses is a fundamental right, essential for preventing miscarriages of justice and for assuring that fair trials are provided for all defendants." Id. at 157-58, 88 S.Ct. at 1452 (emphasis added). Nevertheless, since 1888,³ the Supreme Court has adhered to the principle that "there is a class of petty or minor offenses . . . which . . . may . . . be tried by the court and without a jury . . .." Callan v. Wilson, 127 U.S. 540, 555, 8 S.Ct. 1301, 1306, 32 L.Ed.2d 223 (1888) (emphasis added), recently reaff'd in Ludwig v. Massachusetts, 427 U.S. 618, 624-25, 96 S.Ct. 2781, 49 L.Ed.2d 732 (1976). Accordingly, the crux of the question presented is whether for constitutional purposes the act of driving while intoxicated is a "petty" offense or a "serious" crime. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court has never precisely defined the difference between these two levels, Merrick, supra, 459 F.2d at 645, this Court must carefully analyze the opinions of the Supreme Court which have addressed the issue in order to identify the relevant factors for consideration.⁴

In Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66, 69, 90 S.Ct. 1886, 1888, 26 L.Ed.2d 437 (1970), Justice White, writing for the Court, held that "no offense can be deemed `petty' for purposes of the right to trial by jury where imprisonment for more than six months is authorized." In so concluding, Justice White synopsized the history of this recurring issue:

In deciding whether an offense is "petty" we have sought objective criteria reflecting the seriousness with which society regards the offense . . . and we have found the most relevant such criteria in the severity of the maximum authorized penalty. . . . Applying these guidelines, we have held that a possible six-month penalty is short enough to permit classification of the offense as "petty."

Id. at 68-69, 90 S.Ct. at 1888 (citations omitted). In a footnote, the Court expanded on this theme:

Decisions of this Court have looked to both the nature of the offense itself, District of Columbia v. Colts, 282 U.S. 63, 51 S.Ct. 52, 75 L.Ed. 177 (1930), as well as the maximum potential sentence, Duncan, supra, in determining whether a particular offense was so serious as to require a jury trial. In this case, we decide only that a potential sentence in excess of six months imprisonment is sufficiently clear by itself to take the offense out of the category of "petty."

Id. at 69 n.6, 90 S.Ct. at 1888.

These pronouncements demonstrate that the severity of the permissible punishment for an offense, if such punishment does not exceed six months imprisonment, cannot be the sole determinative factor. In Merrick, supra, the Fourth Circuit recognized that some crimes may be deemed "so serious as to entitle a defendant to a jury regardless of the penalty." 459 F.2d at 645 n.4, citing Colts, supra, 282 U.S. at 73, 51 S.Ct. 52. It is also clear that Congress' decision to define a petty offense merely by reference to its possible penalties, 18 U.S.C. § 1(3), "does not necessarily mean that one is not constitutionally entitled to a trial by jury." Bishop, supra, 261 F.Supp. at 971, citing inter alia Colts, supra; see also Rothweiler v. Superior Court, 100 Ariz. 37, 410 P.2d 479, 16 A.L.R.3d 1362, 1368 (1966) (en banc). Therefore, although both the lesser severity of the penalty and Congress' declaration that by virtue of such lesser severity it is merely a petty offense are relevant, other criteria must be sought and evaluated by the Court.

The Government has not disputed the theory that where the penalty is less than six months imprisonment, a comprehensive analysis of the "nature" of the offense is required to determine whether it is a "serious" crime, requiring trial by jury, or a "petty" offense, unaccompanied by that privilege. Indeed, it has not been argued that the lesser severity of the offense alone is enough to justify the denial of a constitutional right to a jury trial. Nevertheless, the Government has directed the Court's attention to the Supreme Court's opinion in Codispoti v. Pennsylvania, 418 U.S. 506, 512, 94 S.Ct. 2687, 41 L.Ed.2d 912 (1974), where the defendant protested the summary adjudication of his guilt on a charge of criminal contempt. The Codispoti case is one of several in which the Court struggled with an anomaly created by its prior decisions in this area, to wit: The most relevant criterion in deciding whether a right to trial by jury must be accorded to one accused of any given offense is the severity of the maximum penalty authorized by the legislature for imposition upon conviction. However, the nature of the offense of criminal contempt is not so serious as to entitle a defendant to a jury regardless of the severity...