By Melinda Rogers

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Do criminal defendants have a right to decide whether a judge or jury will weigh the evidence against them at a trial?

The Utah Supreme Court will hear arguments related to that question Tuesday in the case of a middle-school cafeteria worker accused of having sex with a 16-year-old boy. Jamie Lynn Greenwood, 43, was charged in March 2010 in 3rd District Court with felony counts of rape, forcible sodomy and forcible sexual abuse.

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At a glance

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What’s next

Tuesday » The Utah Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Jamie Lynn Greenwood at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City.

March 8 » A review hearing has been set in 3rd District Court for Greenwood before Judge Charlene Barlow in West Jordan.

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Greenwood was set to go to trial by jury in August 2010 when she and her attorney asked trial judge Robert Adkins to hear the case instead.

Prosecutors objected, noting that a Utah rule requires all felony cases to be tried by a jury unless the prosecution consents to a bench trial and the judge approves the change. Prosecutors also cited three cases in which the Utah Supreme Court determined a defendant has no constitutional right to a bench trial.

But Adkins granted the defense’s request, citing a U.S. Supreme Court case that appears to make an exception to the general rule under "some circumstances."

In a written ruling, Adkins wrote that "the cumulative impact" of several factors had created just such "an unusual circumstance" as was envisioned by the high court. The judge noted "the nature of the case, the publicity this case has received, and the fine line between the offenses charged and lesser included offenses which the court had agreed to consider."

Prosecutors appealed, and the high court then agreed to decide the issue.

Greenwood’s attorney, Scott Wiggins, argued in motions filed with the high court in advance of Tuesday’s hearing that the trial court acted within its discretion when granting Greenwood’s waiver of trial by jury.

Greenwood’s case "involves critical questions as to whether there are circumstances so compelling as to provide an exception to the state’s lack of consent to the waiver and its insistence to a trial by jury," Wiggins wrote.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office, in its brief, reiterated that a defendant doesn’t get to choose who issues a verdict — the law sets the rule clearly that felony cases in the state are tried by a jury.

Greenwood has remained free, since posting $10,000 bail in 2010, as her appeal has played out. She has been under supervision by Pretrial Services officials.

Greenwood, a cafeteria supervisor employed at Eastmont Middle School in Sandy since 2006, resigned in March 2010 as a result of the allegations against her.

During an April 2010 preliminary hearing, the alleged victim — who was a friend and classmate of Greenwood’s son — testified he was 14 years old when Greenwood befriended him. Over the next two years, he said, Greenwood bought him gifts and then demanded sexual favors as repayment.

The boy testified he wanted the relationship to stop but that Greenwood threatened to tell his mother and people at school if it ended.

The alleged abuse surfaced after rumors circulated around the boy’s school, Sandy police have said.

The boy said Greenwood bought him clothes, cologne and an iPod for his birthday. She also gave him $300 to buy his mother a Mother’s Day gift, the boy testified.

She performed oral sex on him once when he visited her home to see her son, he testified, and sexually abused him twice when she drove him home from her house.