Sixth Amendment:

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, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The Court held in Ludwig v. Massachusetts that the provision of a jury trial on appeal, instead of at the first level of adjudication, does not violate the right to jury trial so long as the accused does not face any undue burdens in reaching the jury trial stage.1 Ludwig upheld Massachusetts’s “two-tiered” system for trying certain non-petty crimes, which afforded the accused the possibility of a jury trial only after conviction in a non-jury trial at the first tier.2 A defendant keen on a jury trial could expedite the procedure by “admitting sufficient findings of fact” at the first tier, thereby obviating most of the proceedings before the second-tier jury trial, which was de novo (i.e., not influenced by the outcome of the first tier trial).3 The Court held that this procedure did not violate what it called the “ Fourteenth Amendment right to a jury trial.” 4 Because the Massachusetts system undeniably provided the accused with the opportunity for a jury trial, the real question according to the Court was whether the provision of that opportunity only at the second tier “unconstitutionally burden[ed] the exercise of that right.” 5 The Massachusetts system did not impose such an unconstitutional burden, the Court concluded, because the procedure for admitting factual findings at the first tier allowed the accused to mitigate the increased financial costs and “psychological and physical hardships” of two trials.6 The post-Duncan context also appeared to influence the decision: the Ludwig Court, like the Williams and Apodaca Courts, emphasized the need to afford the states flexibility in their manner of administering a jury trial system.7

Footnotes

1

427 U.S. 618, 630 (1976).

2

Id. at 620 ( “Massachusetts is one of several States having a two-tier system of trial courts for criminal cases.” ).

3

Id. at 621.

4

Id. at 626. The Court construed the defendant’s claim as being that the Massachusetts system violated his jury trial right and based its decision largely on Sixth Amendment precedent. Id. at 624–26. The Court refrained from expressly tying its holding to the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial, however, presumably to retain Justice Powell’s vote in the five-justice majority. See id. at 632 (Powell, J., concurring) ( “I join the opinion of the Court, as I understand it to be consistent with my view that the right to a jury trial afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment is not identical to that guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.” ).

5

Id. at 626.

6

Id. at 626–27, 628–29. The Court also rejected the argument that the “possibility of a harsher sentence at the second tier” unduly burdened exercise of the jury trial right, relying on due process cases for the proposition that the Constitution prohibits only “the vindictive imposition of an increased sentence.” Id. at 627.

7

Ludwig, 427 U.S. at 630 ( “The modes of exercising federal constitutional rights have traditionally been left, within limits, to state specification. In this case, Massachusetts absolutely guarantees trial by jury to persons accused of serious crimes, and the manner it has specified for exercising this right is fair and not unduly burdensome.” ).