Opinion ID: 1965277
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Court's Refusal to Grant a Motion for a Bench Trial

Text: Next, appellant argues that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to grant his request for a bench trial. Whether or not to grant a defendant's request for a bench trial is within the sound discretion of the trial court. Commonwealth v. Sorrell, 500 Pa. 355, 362, 456 A.2d 1326, 1328-29 (1982). Accordingly, appellant has no absolute right to a bench trial. See, Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 34, 85 S.Ct. 783, 789-90, 13 L.Ed.2d 630 (1965) (no right to a bench trial under United States Constitution). In the present case, the trial court denied appellant's request for a non-jury trial because the court felt that as a result of its exposure to large amounts of excludable evidence in pretrial proceedings, it could not be an impartial fact-finder. Sorrell, supra (court should consider prior exposure to inadmissible evidence; court properly exercised discretion in denying motion for bench trial where court had determined that its partiality was potentially tainted by exposure to defendant's record in pretrial proceedings). Given this exposure, it was a proper exercise of the court's discretion to deny the request for a bench trial.