A committee of 18 judges, lawyers and citizens is preparing to study Hawaii's jury system to determine whether or not its size should be reduced from 12 to six persons for civil trials and some criminal trials in state courts ("Panel considers 6-person jury," Oct. 12).

The impetus for this study is the "severe budget restraint" on Hawaii's court system and a request from the state Supreme Court to explore potential cost savings in addition to broader issues related to the consequences and constitutionality of different jury models.

Some people believe the jury is the crowning glory of American criminal justice. Richard Turbin, an attorney and former president of the Hawaii State Bar Association, speaks for many when he says that the "American jury system is a wonderful system ... one of the most important features of democracy and a civilized nation."

But this view fails to acknowledge some powerful contradictions. For one, if Americans believe they have the best system in the world, why do so many people do everything they can to duck out when they are called to serve? Nationwide, the no-show rate for jury service is more than 50 percent. In Japan, which began a jury system of sorts in August, the no-show rate is less than 10 percent.

Even more troubling is the huge gap that exists between the law on the books and the law in action. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives defendants "in all criminal prosecutions" the right to "a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury," yet this right is rarely exercised.

In Hawaii and almost every other American jurisdiction, the vast majority of criminal defendants do not receive a trial by jury; instead, their cases are plea-bargained.

This — justice without trial — is not the way the criminal process works in other rich democracies, so we need to ask why plea-bargaining has triumphed so completely in American criminal justice. And why are trials such rare events in Hawaii and other American states?

The core of the answer is that American jury trials are so unworkable — so costly, complex and time-consuming to the judges and attorneys who process criminal cases — that those actors routinely pressure defendants to give up their right to trial by jury. The mechanism that makes plea-bargaining work is the trial tax — the threat of a post-trial sentence that is significantly more severe than the sentence offered in plea-bargaining.

Sentences imposed after trial are routinely double or triple what was offered pre-trial, and sometimes even five or six times more severe than the sentence that would have resulted from a guilty plea.

Sentencing differentials of this magnitude are coercive. For many defendants, they make the plea offer resemble "the offer that cannot be refused," which Mafia boss Don Corleone made to one of his business associates in "The Godfather" film. Whatever its efficacy in the underworld, this is not a principled way to make decisions about life, liberty and justice.

Plea-bargaining suffers from other afflictions as well. Because it occurs backstage in offices and corridors, it provides little of the transparency and accountability that we have come to expect from government practices. It corrupts the truth by allowing defendants to plead guilty to conduct that bears little relationship to what they actually did. And it concentrates enormous power — to charge, adjudicate and sentence — in the prosecutor's hands. Considering how often it is said that Americans mistrust concentrated government power, the last fact is ironic.

We'll leave it to others to debate the merits of reforming the jury for civil trials. When it comes to criminal justice, however, the evidence is as clear as it is neglected and ignored: Trials are rare events, and the commonplace nature of plea bargaining makes a mockery of our Constitution and our democratic ideals.

The reality in other countries demonstrates that plea-bargaining is not inevitable. When the committee considers how Hawaii's juries can be improved, we hope it will take a long look at plea-bargaining, too. It is the jury's ugly offspring, and it is taken for granted.