The judge is probably right. When a person hires an attorney, he becomes a client of that attorney, except if the hiring contract states otherwise. When the person becomes a client, he has just become a ward of the court and turned over his trial to the judge and the attorneys. He no longer has any say regarding what goes on in his trial. If there is no agreement included in the contract, that there will be a jury, then the allowance for a jury is completely up to the judge and the attorneys. If they decide for whatever reason that there will NOT be a jury, then the decision is the judges. In other words, the jury right has been waved by the accused right at the time he hired the attorney and became a client of that attorney. It has been that way for a long time. It's just that the courts (the judges) seldom exercise their authority to deprive someone of a jury when he asks for it. https://www.youarelaw.org/Download/CorpusJurisSecundum-AttorneyClient.pdf