Maybe not required but certainly allowed for.Article iii of the US Constitution:
Section 1. The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.
And I'll wager that state constitutions are worded similarly.
Sure, there is similar such language for the establishment of Courts, in Article 4 of the Ohio Constitution.
In Ohio, if the defendant demands a jury trial, the state has to abide by it. The exception is Minor Misdemeanor charges, they are not triable by Jury.
What TM was stating was that if the STATE (i.e., the prosecution) requests a jury, they can have it even if the defense doesn't. The US Constitution (and many of the states) guarantees the right of the defendant to a jury trial, but it is unspecified if the state has the same right. However, there are court cases (notably the Illinois Supreme Court People v. Scornavache) that do give such right to the state.
In Ohio, if the defendant demands a jury trial, the state has to abide by it. The exception is Minor Misdemeanor charges, they are not triable by Jury.
Actually you seem to still not get it, or maybe you don't want to understand. But it is a huge deal, if the defense had won the Sirois hearing my husband would not be in prison right now. Literally. This was also the point in time that he was offered 6 months SHOCK, right before the hearing. Even the DA thought the defense was going to win the hearing.
The DA was not going to call me to testify and did not. The main witness and in their eyes the "victim". A right the defendant has is to confront the victim under cross- examination. The Sirois hearing allowed for the DA to not call me as a witness, by being declaring legally unavailable by the Judge. And in our case allowing hearsay at trial.
I had a similar occurrence at my trial. A defense witness who was deposed prior to trial was, for some reason, not "available" to testify at trial. So, the defense attorney had a colleague take the stand and read this witness' deposition responses to the jury. By doing this his statements went unchallenged or clarified, similar to yours, because he was 'unavailable.'
IMO, if a person can testify against you, similar to what you inadvertently did to your husband that night, that witness should be able to testify in court. By doing what they did in both of our trials, statements can be taken out of context, read to the jury, and never cross examined or explained.
Whether or not the prosecutor felt they were going to prevail in a particular hearing doesn't mean they wouldn't attempt it. Defense attorneys do the same thing. The fact of the matter is that the prosecutor DID prevail. That the prosecutor wasn't confident that they would prevail is why they offered a deal. It's all moot now, anyway.
Of course the DA wasn't going to call you to testify! DV victims are notoriously unreliable! Also, while the defendant has the right to confront their accuser, true, but that doesn't mean that the DA has to call the accuser. The defense certainly can themselves and your husband didn't assert that right). That your husbands attorney didn't assert that right is not the fault of the prosecution.
If you are appealing the conviction you can only appeal the calls of the presiding judge and whether or not the procedure of the trial was correct. You cannot call witnesses or introduce new evidence. It's not a new trial.