Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968), was a significant United States Supreme Court decision which incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to a criminal jury trial and applied it to the states.
Background
In October 1966, Gary Duncan, a 19-year-old African-American, was driving down a Louisiana highway when he noticed his nephew Bert Grant and cousin Bernard St. Ann with a group of four white teenagers, including Herman Landry, on the side of the road.
He became concerned because his cousins had reported occurrences of "racial incidents" at the recently desegregated school. He pulled over the car, stepped out, and asked his cousins to get in the car. Landry insulted Duncan, calling him a racial slur. According to historian Matthew Van Meter, Duncan told Landry to go home, "reaching out to the boy's arm in a gesture that was both conciliatory and final." He cites Congressional records from the ratification of the amendment to support his position. He holds that anything less than total incorporation would leave the enforcement of these rights to the whims of the judiciary.
Justice Fortas, concurring, believed that the right to jury trial is fundamental for serious offenses, but it is not the court's role to dictate to the states what specific form such a jury trial should take. The states should be free to develop their own rules regarding the exercise of a jury trial and not to be held accountable to some historical or federal standard.
Dissenting opinion
Justice Harlan, dissenting, wrote that states could devise their own systems, subject to the Constitution:
<blockquote>The States have always borne primary responsibility for operating the machinery of criminal justice within their borders, and adapting it to their particular circumstances. In exercising this responsibility, each State is compelled to conform its procedures to the requirements of the Federal Constitution. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that those procedures be fundamentally fair in all respects. It does not, in my view, impose or encourage nationwide uniformity for its own sake; it does not command adherence to forms that happen to be old; and it does not impose on the States the rules that may be in force in the federal courts except where such rules are also found to be essential to basic fairness.</blockquote>
Decision
The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in favor of Duncan by arguing that the right to a jury trial in criminal cases was fundamental and central to the American conception of justice. As such the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to honor requests for jury trials. The Court maintained the common-law exception for "petty crimes," which are defined as those punishable by a maximum of a $500 fine and six months in prison. In such cases, states are not obligated to provide jury trials.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 391
- The Duncan cases