'I'm really struggling with this one': Senate debates making it harder to get a bench trial

PROVIDENCE – The state Senate Committee of the Judiciary this week waded into the debate over whether prosecutors should be able to veto a defendant's right to waive a trial by jury and instead have the case be heard by a judge alone.

“The jury system is the American way,” Stephen Dambruch, chief of the criminal division at the attorney general’s office, told the Committee Tuesday.

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The legislation, submitted in the House and Senate at the request of Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, would require prosecutors’ consent for a defendant to waive a jury. Neronha pushed for the change after Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini found a Barrington dentist not guilty of assaulting his neighbor in a high-profile hate crimes case.

Dambruch cast the proposal as not being about a particular judge or case, but instead as an “important criminal justice reform” that is modeled after the federal court system and would be in keeping with 31 other states. It is designed to protect the public's interest, he said.

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Rhode Island as an outlier as a `positive thing'

But Committee Vice Chairman Frank S. Lombardi pointed out that the state law allowing a defendant and the court alone to agree to waive a jury was intended to protect the rights of the defendant as they face the power of the state.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time I support our attorney general, but I’m really struggling with this one,” Lombardi, a lawyer, said.

Dambruch emphasized that a defendant has a Constitutional right to a jury trial, not a jury-waived trial and that the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated it’s preferable to try a case before a jury.

Lombardi noted the Rhode Island Supreme Court has found that a defendant does have a right to waive a jury under state law.

“We often hear that Rhode Island is an outlier and it’s never a positive thing, and in this case I can’t help but think that it is a positive thing … We give a criminal defendant … enhanced protection under our statute,” Lombardi said.

Belief that the federal system is more fair

Sen. Matthew LaMountain, D- Warwick, observed that it could be “opening a can of worms” by giving prosecutors the authority to veto bench trials in District Court – thus pushing cases to Superior Court where they can be tried before a jury.

Dambruch said he would recommend that District Court be exempted, as seen in the House version of the bill.

“Why now?” LaMountain, a former prosecutor, asked.

Dambruch said that as former federal prosecutors, he, Neronha and Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein have come to the conclusion that the federal system is more fair.

`There is no problem with our system in Rhode Island'

Public Defender Collin Geiselman urged the committee not to pass the measure.

“There is no problem with our system in Rhode Island,” he said.

He said he finds arguments that the legislation is about victims’ rights unconvincing.

Defendants are presumed innocent until the government overcomes that presumption in a court of law, he said. Defendants enjoy that same presumption at a bench trial and to object to a not-guilty finding, is to have presumed he or she guilty in the first place, he said.

“You shouldn’t do it and you can’t do it,” Michael DiLauro, lobbyist for The Just Criminal Justice Group, said.

The legislations’ passage would put state law in conflict with a Superior Court rule and under state law, the “court rule controls” under separation of powers.

Plus, he said, waiving a jury trial in cases in which a person’s sanity is in question “is absolutely necessary.”

The state law allowing an accused person to waive a trial by jury has been in place since 1929. The practice is also dictated by a state Superior Court rule of criminal procedure, instituted in 1972, that specifies that cases be tried by a jury unless the defendant waives a jury trial in writing in open court with the approval of the judge.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Senate judiciary considers legislation to require the state's consent to waive a jury