The Law: Standard for States

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Trial by jury. The very phrase is so much a part of the American pattern that it hardly seems open to question. Indeed, the Sixth Amendment guarantees that right to an accused in federal court. Yet in a dozen states the defendant is left to the mercy of a judge in cases where there would be no question of his right to a federal jury. Last week the Supreme Court brought those states into line.

The court's decision involved a Negro named Gary Duncan, a small ferryboat captain in New Orleans who was charged with simple assault after he got into an argument with four white teenagers. Though two Negro witnesses testified that Duncan had merely touched one of the whites, the whites were unanimous in their contention that he had slapped one of the men on the elbow. Duncan asked for a jury trial, which the Louisiana constitution requires in cases that may involve capital punishment or imprisonment at hard labor. Since he faced a maximum of two years without hard labor and a $300 fine, Duncan did not get a jury. The judge found him guilty, sentenced him to 60 days and fined him $150.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, Duncan's lawyers argued that a jury trial is an integral part of "due process of law," which is guaranteed in the states by the 14th Amendment. The due-process clause has been frequently used to extend other parts of the federal Bill of Rights to the states, and a 7-to-2 majority of the court agreed that it also covers jury trials.

Dissenting, as he so often has from extensions of Bill of Rights guarantees, Justice John Harlan repeated his feeling that due process "requires only that criminal trials be fundamentally fair." Since it cannot "be demonstrated that trial by jury is the only fair means," Justice Harlan would have upheld the conviction. But fairness was not the pivotal factor to Justice Byron White, who wrote for the majority. To him, the jury trial is so "fundamental to the American scheme of justice" that every citizen is entitled to it in "serious" criminal cases, whether or not another trial method might also have been fair. The court did not specify what it meant by "serious." But it implied that a maximum sentence of six months might well be the dividing line.