Highlights
Only 2% of federal criminal defendants go to trial, and most who do are found guilty.
As to states, jury trials accounted for fewer than 3% of criminal dispositions.
Trials and juries are few because the of the nature of crimes prosecuted, and the fact that the justice system can’t afford them.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.
Article
A trial or a jury trial is seen as a fundamental right of Americans. It’s the centerpiece of endless movies and television dramas. They are also close to disappearing.
“Currently in the United States every person accused of a crime punishable by incarceration for more than six months has a constitutional right to a trial by jury, which arises in federal court from the Sixth Amendment, the Seventh Amendment, and Article Three of the United States Constitution, which states in part, “The Trial of all Crimes … shall be by Jury, and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed”.”
“Most states’ constitutions also grant the right of trial by jury in lesser criminal matters, though most have eliminated that right in offenses punishable by fine only. The Supreme Court has ruled that if imprisonment is for six months or less, trial by jury is not required, meaning a state may choose whether or not to permit trial by jury in such cases,” Wikipedia.
But based on research from Pew (below), Only 2% of federal criminal defendants go to trial, and most who do are found guilty. As to states, in 2017 – the year with the most recent data – jury trials accounted for fewer than 3% of criminal dispositions.
What Happened?
The nature of criminal arrests and prosecutions in the United States is, generally speaking, one of overwhelming evidence. But that statement requires some explanation.
First, the overwhelming majority of reported crimes do not end in arrest. Out of close to five million criminal incidents (4,902,000), less than two million (1,822,000) involved an identified suspect, Arrests.
Second, arrests have fallen 25 percent over the last decade, Fewer Arrests.
Third, for many arrests, they are not prosecuted. Federal Data: 16 to 50 percent of federal crimes are declined from prosecution, per “Federal Justice Statistics.” State Data: 34 percent of state felony cases are not convicted (approximately nine percent involve a deferred adjudication or diversion outcome), per “Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties,” Prosecutions.
More Reasons
There are endless reasons for reported crimes not being solved and prosecuted but, in essence, what you end up with are criminal cases that have a high probability of conviction, thus there are incentives to plead guilty to lesser crimes in the hope that the defendant will get a lighter sentence.
There is nothing new in the statement above; the vast majority of arrests have been disposed of by a plea bargain thus avoiding a trial altogether.
The entire judicial system depends on this reality to process criminal cases quickly. If trials (especially jury trials) suddenly increased, it would shut down the criminal justice system in months.
Yes, there are bench trials decided by a judge based on the perception that a judge may be more lenient as to sentencing. In the federal system, however, there are more jury trials than bench trails.
Conclusions-Implications For Criminal Justice
The offender who gets through the funnel of non-arrest and non-prosecution is most likely a violent offender or someone with repeat arrests, convictions, and incarcerations.
Property crimes have such a high likelihood of non-arrest and non-convictions that many law enforcement agencies no longer investigate them except those of high dollar value or those cases where the defendant is caught in the act or possesses the stolen goods.
Many defendants have a charge of violence with people (probably victims) willing to state that the person arrested “is” correctly implicated. Because you have someone directly implicating the defendant, and the charge is serious, there is a high probability of physical evidence collected.
If prosecuted, the crime is serious. The defendant has probably been before the court numerous times.
This is why recidivism of incarcerated offenders is ridiculously high with most offenders rearrested and reincarcerated, Recidivism. The majority of felony convictions do not end in a prison sentence per federal statistics.
But it’s not just the lack of trials that allow the expeditious processing of a multitude of offenders, the entire criminal justice system from prosecution to corrections is built on “systems” that funnel offenders through a matrix that encourages a focus on the most serious, especially in urban jurisdictions.
Trials and juries are dead because the justice system can’t afford them.
We have to pick and choose who we focus on. Because of finances, we don’t have a choice.
Report From Pew (edited for brevity)
Trials are rare in the federal criminal justice system – and acquittals are even rarer.
Nearly 80,000 people were defendants in federal criminal cases in fiscal 2018, but just 2% of them went to trial. The overwhelming majority (90%) pleaded guilty instead, while the remaining 8% had their cases dismissed, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data collected by the federal judiciary.
Most defendants who did go to trial, meanwhile, were found guilty, either by a jury or judge. (Defendants can waive their right to a jury trial if they wish.)
Put another way, only 320 of 79,704 total federal defendants – fewer than 1% – went to trial and won their cases.
Fewer Trials, More Guilty Pleas
Trials have been relatively rare in the federal criminal justice system for decades, but they have become even less common over time. The share of defendants who went to trial fell from 7% in fiscal 1998 to 2% two decades later.
As trials have become rarer, guilty pleas have become more common. The share of federal criminal defendants who entered guilty pleas rose from 82% in 1998 to 90% two decades later. Guilty pleas rose in absolute numbers, too, from 55,913 in 1998 to 71,550 in 2018.
How State Courts Compare
Statistics about trial rates in state courts are harder to come by because each state runs its own court system and no standardized record-keeping system covers all states. But trial rates in criminal cases tend to be very low in the states for which data is available, according to a database maintained by the National Center for State Courts, an independent research organization focused on the state judiciary.
In 2017 – the year with the most recent data – jury trials accounted for fewer than 3% of criminal dispositions in 22 jurisdictions with available data, including Texas (0.86%), Pennsylvania (1.11%), California (1.25%), Ohio (1.27%), Florida (1.53%), North Carolina (1.66%), Michigan (2.12%) and New York (2.91%).
“If anything,” a 2017 law journal article said, “there is even less likelihood of a case proceeding to trial in state court than in federal court.”
Source
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