Why jury of six people

Some researchers hypothesized that minority jurors would be less likely to participate in less-diverse groups, but at least one study showed that diversity did not affect the participation levels of minority jurors. Cornwell, York, and Hans analyzed data from 2, jurors on criminal cases in four jurisdictions to consider what conditions influence participation in jury deliberations.

They suggest that "full participation by jurors from diverse backgrounds" is beneficial for jury fact-finding. Sommers found that the racial composition of juries affected the deliberative content. Coders evaluated the deliberative content of the mock juries and found that White jury members were more likely to raise novel facts in diverse jury deliberations than all-White jury deliberations.

Also, uncorrected factual errors were less frequent in diverse groups than in all-White groups. Black participants were more likely to raise novel, race-related issues than White participants in diverse groups. Larger group sizes mean that there is a larger representative sample. In addition to increasing the likelihood of diversity, a larger jury is more likely to have a wider range of talents, skills for performing specialized tasks, and knowledge.

As group sizes increase, there is an increasing organization and division of labor amongst the members. Also, Hans conducted an experiment where she asked judges and juries to watch a mock trial in which mtDNA was at issue and then take a quiz testing how well they understood the scientific evidence.

She found that college-educated jurors were more competent at fact-finding than jurors who were not college educated. Jurors outperformed judges on a question about the maternal heritage of mtDNA, which highlights the value of juror deliberation. Hans, 44, Judges, Juries, and Scientific Evidence If larger juries make it more likely that there will be a juror with a background in science, one can infer that larger juries are more likely to be capable of handling scientific evidence presented at trial.

This is supported by an experiment with mock jurors which found that twelve-person juries recalled more probative evidence and relied less on non-probative evidence than six-person juries. Additionally, it should be noted that efficiency is one justification for using smaller juries. Most research indicates that, on average, larger juries spend a longer time in deliberation than smaller juries.

Saks and Marti report that the unweighted mean length of deliberation time was 53 minutes for small juries and 70 minutes for large juries. While this finding supports the efficiency justification for smaller juries, it is possible that the greater deliberation time indicates a more thoughtful and collaborative review of the trial testimonies and evidence.

Smaller juries thus might save a marginal amount of time but result in reduced deliberation. Below is a chart of the mean length of deliberation time for small and large juries in different studies:. Probabilities and distributions were calculated for this project.

Search this site Search Cornell. Student Projects. Shari Seidman Diamond, et. Florida ii and the Jury of Six During the s, court reform movements pressed to both increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of court proceedings.

Joiner, Civil Justice and the Jury 31, 83 concluding that the deliberative process should be the same in either the six- or man jury. But in Florida and a handful of other states, only six jurors are seated in the majority of felony cases — even in some of the most violent and serious crimes. This element of Florida's criminal-justice system was highlighted during Zimmerman's trial and after his acquittal on second-degree-murder charges in the shooting death of year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb.

When the all-female jury was chosen, critics pointed out the lack of diversity on the panel. And now, in the wake of Zimmerman's acquittal, U. Randolph Bracy, D-Fla. Legal experts and researchers back up Bracy's premise: that six-member juries are less diverse than member panels, said Susan Rozelle, a law professor at Stetson University College of Law.

Defendants are constitutionally entitled to a fair cross-section of potential jurors, but that doesn't mean the people who are actually seated for the jury have to demonstrate that diversity, she said. In Zimmerman's trial, all of the jurors were women — five of them white — and they ranged in age from 20s to 60s.

Rozelle said even if the jury pool is ethnically diverse, a smaller panel lessens the likelihood of having other kinds of diversity. Rozelle said if every juror on any panel has the same background, the same life experiences, and are the same demographic, they are likely going to view the facts the same. They may not see an alternative perspective because it simply didn't occur to them and they have no one to point it out, she said. In some cases, the law professor said, "everyone agrees what the facts are, but they disagree bitterly on what those facts mean.

If the trial is about truth seeking, it helps to have all possible interpretations of those facts considered. In the days since Zimmerman was acquitted, the Seminole County jurors who found him not guilty have faced sharp criticism from legal observers and others. Some have questioned why there were no blacks on the jury because there were several in the pool that was culled from several hundred to 40 after a week of jury selection. Justice Harlan harshly criticized the majority's reasoning, asking where and how the Court might draw the line on jury size.

Would a three-person jury be okay, he wondered? In two cases heard together in , Apodaca v Oregon and J ohnson v Louisiana , the Court considered the constitutionality of state laws that permitted criminal defendants to be convicted by less-than-unanimous votes. Oregon allowed convictions on 10 to 2 votes, while Louisiana went further and allowed convictions on votes of 9 to 3.

The Court, voting 5 to 4, upheld both state laws even though five justices clearly stated their beliefs that unanimity was required by the Sixth Amendment. The odd result occurred because Justice Powell, concurring in both cases, concludes that the Sixth Amendment imposes greater requirements on the federal government than the Fourteenth Amendment, incorporating the basic Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, imposes on the states. Powell's rejection of jot-for-jot incorporation was not supported in this case by any other justice.

The Court's conclusion in Apodaca and Johnson adopted reasoning similar to that used in Williams v Florida : the right to a unanimous jury verdict might have been the common expectation at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, but the First Congress rejected language that would have made the unanimity requirement specific. A concurring opinion by Justice Blackmun suggests that he would have a constitutional problem with 8 to 4 or 7 to 5 verdicts.

The four dissenting justices argued that the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt was unconstitutionally weakened by the states' laws allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases. In Ballew v Georgia , the Court decided it had gone far enough down the slippery slope.

Justice Blackmun's opinion for the Court, relying on a set of empirical studies showing problems with smaller juries, found that Georgia's law allowing criminal juries of just five person violated the Sixth Amendment rights of defendants.

While concurring in the result, Justice Powell, joined by two other justices, reiterated that he did not think the Fourteenth Amendment imposed exactly the same requirements for juries on states that the Sixth Amendment did on the federal government.