The Looming Criminal Justice Pandemic Catastrophe
I want to highlight what a complete shitshow the criminal justice system is currently. In my area, jury trials are de facto indefinitely suspended. Theoretically there is an end date, but our supreme court keeps pushing the day on a near weekly basis. I don't think this is reflexive or alarmist, because courthouses tend to be ancient buildings where every square footage is savored. A jury trial may require only a dozen jurors, but the procedure back in the old days is to call potentially hundreds of people to the pool. This is a necessity to an extent, because both prosecutors and defense attorneys have peremptory challenges where they can kick out any juror without explaining why. In addition, some jurors disqualify themselves either intentionally or inadvertently. You will inevitably require a larger pool in order to narrow it down.
Additionally, juror pools are usually drawn from voter registries. Guess who's more likely to be registered to vote and more likely to not suffer financial hardship because they don't have a day job? Yes, old people. Juror pools inevitably skew older than the average.
On top of that, you have everyone involved in the trial itself. This includes potentially dozens of witnesses. Because trial scheduling is so unpredictable, witnesses are usually on standby in the courthouse waiting in the hallway before they are called. There is also a constitutional concern here, namely the Confrontation Clause. This has been interpreted (with some trimming on the edges) to require face-to-face testimony in criminal matters. The side benefit is that jurors are presumably better equipped to ascertain someone's credibility when they're physically in front of them.
I don't know if I'm exaggerating how big of a deal this is because it's my day job, but it's a huge mess. A commonly understood "feature" of the US criminal justice system is that many defendants plead guilty just to get out of jail. There is a perverse system in place where demanding a trial can result in innumerable delays, either from your own defense attorney or the prosecutor, who both benefit from more time investigating the case and collecting evidence. The plea offer is intentionally lower than what you would face at trial in order to encourage you to take it. I have plead out hundreds of people at this point with an offer of credit for time served, and I know more than a few people who were genuinely innocent but did not want to pursue the recourse of a trial when it means waiting in jail for that to happen.
Right now that pressure has been ramped up. Your phantom dream of having a jury trial is now even more indefinitely on hold. It will not happen anytime soon. Even if the courts say 'go', an absurd number of people will just refuse to show up to a cramped hotbed of infection. Meanwhile, people are waiting in jail.
Lawyers and judges are aware of what's happening and they've been brainstorming a solution, but nothing obvious comes to mind. Everyone is reticent of allowing jurors to be on a trial through video conferencing because their attention in person is already at the bottom, and it would only get worse when they're at home. Defense attorneys are worried video conferencing would trivialize the entire matter when the defendant is not visible to them or on a tiny video screen. Prosecutors are also concerned that the experiences of the victims would be similarly trivialized. You could theoretically demand a bench trial where the judge determines your guilt, but judges overwhelmingly are former prosecutors, and that's not exciting.
No one is happy with the situation, and there's nothing close on the horizon. The backlog is already absurd now and getting worse every day.