[rayiner]

I used the '>' symbol to indicate the paragraph was a block quote, and put the cite to Callan under the whole thing to indicate where the block quote was coming from. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I'm not quoting Callan for its holding, but its discussion of what courts understood the jury trial right (which predates the Constitution) to mean. Hence the relevance of the state court cases--state courts were the ones interpreting the jury trial right before federal courts existed.

Although Callan does not find conspiracy to be a petty offense, it acknowledges that there is a class of such offenses that do not fall within the right to a jury trial, which is the only point I wanted to make. I thought it was pretty clear that I thought a speeding camera ticket was a petty offense of the sort Callan refers to.

[arca_vorago]

Thanks for clarifying. Knowing lawyers I tend to think they have a magical ability to obsfucate even simple arguments behind rhetoric.

Please consider trying to not fall into this trap by learning how to state your arguments more clearly. Among other lawyers and judges things like this pass, but by creating a seperate language the common people don't understand, I think the people are done a disservice. (I also think this was one the highlights of the Code of Hammurabi... the first time the law was written in the common tongue.)