Cite as: 518 U. S. 322 (1996)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
offenses considered alone is punishable by more than six months in prison. The holding both in its doctrinal formulation and in its practical effect is one of the most serious incursions on the right to jury trial in the Court's history, and it cannot be squared with our precedents. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a jury trial to a defendant charged with a serious crime. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 159 (1968). Serious crimes, for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, are defined to include any offense which carries a maximum penalty of more than six months in prison; the right to jury trial attaches to those crimes regardless of the sentence in fact imposed. Id., at 159-160. This doctrine is not questioned here, but it does not define the outer limits of the right to trial by jury. Our cases establish a further proposition: The right to jury trial extends as well to a defendant who is sentenced in one proceeding to more than six months' imprisonment. Codispoti v. Pennsylvania, 418 U. S. 506 (1974); Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U. S. 488 (1974). To be more specific, a defendant is entitled to a jury if tried in a single proceeding for more than one petty offense when the combined sentences will exceed six months' imprisonment; taken together, the crimes then are considered serious for constitutional purposes, even if each is petty by itself, Codispoti v. Pennsylvania, supra, at 517.
The defendants in Codispoti and Taylor had been convicted of criminal contempt without juries in States where the legislatures had not set a maximum penalty for the crime. Taylor was convicted of nine separate contempts and sentenced to six months in prison. The Court held he was not entitled to a jury trial. Since the total sentence was only six months' imprisonment, the "eight contempts, whether considered singly or collectively, thus constituted petty offenses, and trial by jury was not required." Taylor v. Hayes, supra, at 496. Codispoti, by contrast, was convicted of seven contempts, and he was sentenced to six terms of six months' imprisonment and one term of three months'
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