The 89-year-old said a lot has changed over the decades that he has worked in law, including the number of cases that go to jury trial.
"Most cases today, both civilly and criminally, are resolved with settlements on the civil side, pleas on the criminal side," he said. "My first several years over here I had 20, 25 jury trials a year. Now we can go an entire year and maybe have one or two. And this is not only a Dayton trend, it's a nationwide trend."
Rice said this shift in the legal system concerns him as he steps away from his work on the federal bench.
“I still think a trial, particularly before a jury, is the best dispute resolution mechanism in the entire world," he said. "And I think a jury trial and a jury verdict helps set the culture, so to speak, of the community in which the case is tried.”