In Ohio, just 2.5 percent of criminal cases in common pleas courts were resolved by going to trial in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the state Supreme Court. In Franklin County, the figure was 2.1 percent.

Knowing he would go to prison for at least six years if convicted at trial, Donald E. Griffin decided to accept a plea deal that could lead to probation for fatally shooting a burglar outside his East Side home.

Griffin wanted to argue self-defense but didn�t want to risk putting his fate in the hands of a jury � �a flip of a coin,� in the words of his attorney.

Such plea agreements have become so common that the number of trials by juries or judges has reached a historic low. In Ohio, just 2.5 percent of criminal cases in common pleas courts were resolved by going to trial in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the state Supreme Court.

In Franklin County, the figure was 2.1 percent.

Common pleas trials in civil cases were even rarer � 1.2 percent statewide and 0.5 percent in Franklin County.

Supreme Court records show similar trial rates in municipal courts, which hear misdemeanor crime and traffic cases and civil disputes involving $15,000 or less.

Common pleas courts handle felony crimes and civil disputes involving more than $15,000. Experts cite a number of reasons for the low trial rates, including the escalating cost of taking civil cases to trial and tougher sentencing laws that make criminal defendants more willing to seek plea deals.

Joshua Dressler, a professor at Ohio State University�s Moritz College of Law, suspects that average citizens, especially those who watch TV dramas, would be stunned by the numbers.

�What the general public knows is Law and Order, where everything seems to go to trial,� he said. �It�s just not so.�

The trial rate has been declining for decades. In 1980, 11.2 percent of criminal cases and 16.2 percent of civil cases went to trial in the state�s common pleas courts, said Chris Davey, a Supreme Court spokesman.

In the nation�s federal courts, the rate of civil cases that went to trial fell from 11.5 percent in 1962 to 1.8 percent in 2002, according to �The Vanishing Trial,� a report compiled for the American Bar Association. In 2012, the rate was 1.2 percent.

Significantly increasing the number of trials would be �an expensive proposition,� requiring more prosecutors and public defenders and increased overtime pay for law-enforcement officers to testify, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider said.

�Just because cases aren�t being tried doesn�t mean they�re being dismissed,� he said. �In large part, they are resolved in a way that both sides think is fair.�

The trend toward fewer trials is a national and troubling phenomenon, said Robert P. Burns, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and author of the book The Death of the American Trial. If the trial rate has appeared to stabilize in recent years, it�s because it can�t get much lower, he said.

�I think this is a big deal. An essential element of American democracy is being squeezed out."

Others aren�t as willing to say the trend is a problem.

�A trial should be a last resort� in civil disputes, said Stephen Chappelear, a Columbus litigator and a past president of the Columbus and state bar associations.

Lawsuits are so expensive that �it is rarely cost-effective to go all the way through to trial,� he said. �Overall, it�s a good thing if people can resolve their disputes without the trauma, expense and uncertainty of a trial.�

Some of the decline in civil trials is the result of settlements hammered out by a growing number of trained mediators, a profession that barely existed a decade ago, Chappelear pointed out.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O�Brien attributes the decline in criminal trials in part to police investigations that have become so thorough � and sometimes complete with DNA evidence or surveillance video � that �when defendants come to court, there isn�t anything to try.�

Plea agreements, he said, are an effort �to accomplish what we would have accomplished at trial."

O�Brien cited a recent case in which a defendant charged with murder and aggravated robbery pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in a deal that included a 25-year sentence. Had the defendant gone to trial and been convicted of murder, O�Brien said, he could have been sentenced to 15 years to life and been released in 25 years.

�Weren�t we more efficiently accomplishing the same thing?� he asked.

Plea deals have become more attractive to defendants as state legislators enacted laws to create mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, said Columbus attorney Jonathan Tyack.

He represents Donald Griffin, who was looking at a mandatory sentence of at least six years in prison if convicted of voluntary manslaughter with two gun specifications in the shooting of a burglar fleeing his house.

Instead, Griffin pleaded guilty in November to voluntary manslaughter with no gun specifications. He could receive probation or as few as three years in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 20.

�A defendant is put in a position where he�s better off pleading to something that gives the judge some discretion in sentencing,� Tyack said.

Increasingly tough sentencing laws across the country have put prosecutors in a position to make defendants �offers they can�t refuse,� said Burns, of Northwestern�s law school.

Burns thinks the decline in civil trials is a result of both the cost of litigation and recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that make it easier for judges to dismiss lawsuits early in the process.

The trends are contrary to what the nation�s founders had in mind when they created the jury system as �our best demonstration of democracy,� he said. �We�re becoming less democratic and more bureaucratic.�

The American judicial system, Burns said, shouldn�t become a place where the expense or risk of taking a case to trial is so great that �only a crazy person would do it.�

jfutty@dispatch.com