Mississippi Code
Miss. Code Ann. § 99-33-9 (2026)
Trial by jury
✓ current as of July 2026
A defendant in a criminal case before a justice court judge where the potential period of incarceration is more than six (6) months in jail, in like manner as in civil cases, may demand a jury, and thereupon the justice shall proceed as in other cases. If the potential of incarceration is less than six (6) months in jail, there shall be no jury trial.
Codes, 1871, § 1330; 1880, § 2226; 1892, § 2428; 1906, § 2757; Hemingway's 1917, § 2256; 1930, § 2105; 1942, § 1839; Laws, 2008, ch. 319, § 8, eff. 7/24/2008 (the date the United States Attorney General interposed no objection under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965).
Notes of Decisions
Cited in 3
cases, 1986–2020 · leading case: Malone v. State, 486 So. 2d 367 (Miss. 1986).
Malone v. State, 486 So. 2d 367 (Miss. 1986). “Malone having made the requisite prima facie showing here, Miss. Code Ann. § 99-33-9 (Supp. 1985), we remand to the circuit court for an evidentiary hearing on the question of whether such a plea bargain existed prior to Malone's trial.”
Philip Landry v. Judge J. Robert Hoepfner & William Guste, Jr., Attorney Gen., State of Louisiana, 818 F.2d 1169 (5th Cir. 1987). “In Mississippi, it appears that the accused is entitled to a jury in any criminal proceeding in the justice court, which is apparently the lowest level of state court.”
In Re: Just. Court Rules (Miss. 2020). “A jury trial may be demanded in criminal cases pursuant to section 99-33-9 of the Mississippi Code and in civil actions pursuant section 11-9-143 of the Mississippi Code.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the
Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and
treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.