Cite as: 518 U. S. 322 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
creasing to a dramatic extent the number of required jury trials. There are thousands of instances where minor offenses are tried before a judge, and we would err on the other side of sensible interpretation were we to hold that combining petty offenses in a single proceeding mandates a jury trial even when all possibility for a sentence longer than six months has been foreclosed.
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When a defendant's liberty is put at great risk in a trial, he is entitled to have the trial conducted to a jury. This principle lies at the heart of the Sixth Amendment. The Court does grave injury to the Amendment by allowing a defendant to suffer a prison term of any length after a single trial before a single judge and without the protection of a jury. I join only the Court's judgment.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins, dissenting.
The Sixth Amendment provides that the accused is entitled to trial by an impartial jury "[i]n all criminal prosecutions." As Justice Kennedy persuasively explains, the "primary purpose of the jury in our legal system is to stand between the accused and the powers of the State." Ante, at 335. The majority, relying exclusively on cases in which the defendant was tried for a single offense, extends a rule designed with those cases in mind to the wholly dissimilar circumstance in which the prosecution concerns multiple offenses. I agree with Justice Kennedy to the extent he would hold that a prosecution which exposes the accused to a sentence of imprisonment longer than six months, whether for a single offense or for a series of offenses, is sufficiently serious to confer on the defendant the right to demand a jury. See ante, at 335-337.
Unlike Justice Kennedy, however, I believe that the right to a jury trial attaches when the prosecution begins.
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