In Baldwin v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that defendants have a constitutional right to a jury trial when facing serious charges, even at the state level. The case involved a man named Theodore Baldwin who was convicted of "jostling" (a form of pickpocketing) in New York and sentenced to one year in prison without being offered a jury trial because his crime was classified as petty under state law due to its maximum punishment being less than two years imprisonment. However, the court held that any potential sentence over six months is sufficiently severe enough to warrant protection by the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an impartial jury trial for all criminal prosecutions regardless of whether they are federal or state cases.

In the dissenting opinion for Baldwin v. New York, Justice John Marshall Harlan II argued that the majority's decision to extend the right to a jury trial in all cases where imprisonment could exceed six months was an unnecessary expansion of constitutional protections. He contended that this ruling disregarded historical precedent and misinterpreted the Sixth Amendment, which does not specify a specific length of potential incarceration as a threshold for requiring a jury trial. Instead, he believed it should be left up to individual states to determine when such trials are necessary based on their own legal traditions and practical considerations. Furthermore, he warned that this broad interpretation would place undue burdens on already overburdened court systems by increasing demands for juries in minor criminal cases.