399 U.S. 66 (1970)
Appellant was arrested and charged with jostling, a Class A misdemeanor in New York punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of one year.1 He was brought to trial in the New York City Criminal Court.2 Section 40 of the New York City Criminal Court Act declares that all trials in that court shall be without a jury.3 Appellant's pretrial motion for jury trial was accordingly denied.4
He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for the maximum term.5 The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, rejecting appellant’s argument that § 40 was unconstitutional insofar as it denied him an opportunity for jury trial.6 The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.7
Jostling is one of the ways in which legislatures have attempted to deal with pickpocketing.8 New York distinguishes between misdemeanors and felonies in determining such things as whether confinement shall be in county or regional jails, rather than state prison, and whether prosecution may proceed by information or complaint, rather than by grand jury indictment.9 Even New York State would have provided appellant with a six-man-jury trial for this offense if he had been tried outside the City of New York.10 In the entire Nation, New York City alone denies an accused the right to interpose between himself and a possible prison term of over six months, the commonsense judgment of a jury of his peers.11
Whether the possibility of a one-year sentence is enough in itself to require the opportunity for a jury trial?12
The Sixth Amendment, applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees the right to jury trial for serious criminal offenses but permits petty offenses to be tried without a jury.13 An offense is serious, and thus requires a jury trial, when the maximum authorized penalty exceeds six months of imprisonment.14 This objective criterion draws from the severity of the penalty, historical practices in the federal system and states, and the near-uniform national judgment that offenses carrying more than six months imprisonment are serious.15
Yes. The offense of jostling authorizes a maximum penalty of one year imprisonment, which exceeds the six-month threshold that separates petty from serious offenses.16 Appellant faced this penalty in New York City Criminal Court, where Section 40 mandated a bench trial and his motion for a jury was denied, resulting in conviction and a one-year sentence.17 The same charge tried outside New York City would have entitled him to a six-man jury, underscoring that the offense meets the national standard for seriousness under the Sixth Amendment.18
New York City's unique denial of jury trial for penalties over six months conflicts with practices in the federal courts and every other state.19
The possibility of a one-year sentence is enough in itself to require the opportunity for a jury trial, so the conviction must be reversed.20
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Mr. Justice Douglas
Justice Black concurred in the reversal but rejected the majority's distinction between petty and serious offenses.21 He maintained that the Sixth Amendment and Article III guarantee jury trial in all criminal prosecutions and for all crimes without any exception based on penalty length or judicial balancing of convenience against defendant interests.22 In his view, the majority's six-month line amounted to an impermissible judicial amendment of the constitutional text that had already fixed the right for all crimes.23
Chief Justice Burger dissented from the holding that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments require New York City to provide jury trials for offenses punishable by more than six months but less than one year.24 He argued that the constitutional jury guarantees were originally limitations on federal power only, that states historically handled petty offenses without juries, and that New York City's scheme reflected a rational local judgment suited to its unique urban setting rather than a uniform national mandate.25