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Derendal v. Griffith1/14/2005
Order from Phoenix Municipal Court No. 2760118 The Honorable Deborah Griffith Appeal from the Superior Court of Maricopa County No. CV LC 03-000001-001DT The Honorable Michael D. Jones Opinion of the Court of Appeals, Division One No. 1 CA-CV-03-0380
AFFIRMED
VACATED
LAW OFFICES OF NEAL W. BASSETT
We granted review to consider whether Arizona should retain the test set out in Rothweiler v. Superior Court, 100 Ariz. 37, 410 P.2d 479 (1966), to determine when the Arizona Constitution mandates that a criminal offense be eligible for trial by jury.
I.
Justin Derendal was charged in Phoenix Municipal Court with drag racing, a class one misdemeanor, Ariz. Rev. Stat. (A.R.S.) § 28-708.B (2001), punishable by a maximum of six months incarceration, see A.R.S. § 13-707.A.1 (2001), and a $2,500 fine, see A.R.S. § 13-802.A (2001). The municipal court denied Derendal's request for a jury trial, and Derendal filed a special action in superior court. The superior court accepted jurisdiction but denied relief, and Derendal appealed to the court of appeals.
The court of appeals applied the three-part test established by this court in Rothweiler and, concluding that drag racing failed to meet any of the three tests for jury eligibility set out in Rothweiler, affirmed the superior court's judgment.
We granted Derendal's petition for review and ordered the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing whether the Rothweiler test should remain the test for determining jury trial eligibility in Arizona. We exercise jurisdiction pursuant to Article 6, Section 5.3 of the Arizona Constitution and A.R.S. § 12-120.24 (2003).
II.
In 1966, this court adopted a three-pronged test to decide whether, with regard to a particular criminal offense, the federal or Arizona Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial. Relying on both federal and Arizona constitutional law, we defined three factors as relevant to that inquiry: (1) the relationship of the offense to common law crimes; (2) the severity of the statutory penalties that apply; and (3) the moral quality of the act. Rothweiler, 100 Ariz. at 42, 410 P.2d at 483. Over time, Arizona courts have come to view these factors as three independent prongs in the constitutional analysis of the right to jury trial. See, e.g., State v. Harrison, 164 Ariz. 316, 317, 792 P.2d 779, 780 (App. 1990) ("Each prong [of the Rothweiler test] is independently sufficient to give rise to a jury trial.").
Twenty-three years after our Rothweiler decision, the United States Supreme Court held that any criminal offense for which the maximum statutory penalty is less than six months incarceration is presumptively a petty offense to which the right of trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not attach. Blanton v. City of North Las Vegas, 489 U.S. 538, 543 (1989). On several occasions, this court has rejected invitations to replace the Rothweiler test with the Blanton test, reasoning that the Arizona Constitution requires greater protection of the right to trial by jury than does the federal constitution. See, e.g., Benitez v. Dunevant, 198 Ariz. 90, 94 10, 7 P.3d 99, 103 (2000); State ex rel. McDougall v. Strohson, 190 Ariz. 120, 126-27, 945 P.2d 1251, 1257-58 (1997); cf. State ex rel. Dean v. Dolny, 161 Ariz. 297, 299, 778 P.2d 1193, 1195 (1989). We have never expressly considered whether we should adopt a modified version of Blanton. We do so today.
Two separate provisions of the Arizona Constitution secure the right to jury trial for certain criminal defendants. The first, Article
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