Seattle Criminal Attorney | Bench Trial or Jury Trial?
So you have been accused of a transgression. Maybe a DUI, perhaps an assault, perhaps a robbery. And the state isn’t offering you anything you feel comfortable accepting as a plea bargain. Your Seattle DUI attorney informs you the single alternative, if you don’t desire the proposal, is a trial.
You’re okay with that, but are a little cautious regarding the minutiae. In particular, you aren’t definite whether you should ask for a jury trial or ask for a bench trial. Your Seattle criminal attorney is suggesting a jury trial, but you just do not know if you can trust a bunch of people you don’t know to make the honorable verdict.
Picking between a jury trial or a bench trial (where the judge makes the decision of your guilt or innocence) can at times be complex. Let’s look at a pair of scenarios that may need you to go one way or another.
To begin with, the jury trial. You like jury trials since jurors typically aren’t as jaded as judges (they’ve heard a lot of excuses over the years and begin to stop attempting to deduce the disparity). They try intensely to do the appropriate thing and will regularly present you at least a fighting probability. But they can be unpredictable too.
You frequently wish for a jury trial when the state of affairs is pretty unsound, when you possess several inconsistencies in the evidence that just do not make sense, and when you want the fact finder to give you the benefit of the doubt. Juries are capable of doing this. With judges it’s a little more complex (ask any criminal attorney and they’ll tell you this).
Next, the bench trial. You generally like to have these when you hold a exceptionally technical defense, the details of the case are truly unpleasant (the jury will almost be guaranteed to be against you from the start), or you are going to base your defense on a legal issue that you sense the judge will comprehend better than a jury. This too is a crap shoot, as judges, while not unpredictable, have a propensity to slant toward the prosecution.
In the end, the choice to go jury trial or bench trial should perhaps be made by your Seattle DUI attorney. They own the practice to understand which one to make use of, and they know the complexity of the choice. No matter which you pick, though, it’s most likely going to be an uphill war. Good luck!
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