Larger juries recall the evidence more accurately, recall more probative information, and rely less on conclusory statements and nonprobative evidence. In Colgrove, the Court acknowledged the value of minority representation on juries but concluded that reducing the size of juries would have at most a negligible impact. In reality, cutting the size of the jury dramatically increases the chance of excluding minorities.
The Court also erred when it assumed that the values of community representation would be served so long as a single minority member was on the jury. Studies show that the ability of a dissenting voice to withstand group pressure is greatly increased when a second dissenting voice is added. The Supreme Court held that smaller juries are permitted. It never said they are required.
The same goes for Rule 48, which lets judges choose any number of jurors between 6 and And in , the case for returning to the person jury is stronger than ever. First, in an age when fewer and fewer civil cases are tried, each civil jury trial takes on added importance. In , 4. Today, that number has dropped to 0. Fewer jury verdicts means fewer data points on liability and damages.
These are critical signals to parties and lawyers about how to evaluate similar cases, whether to settle, and on what terms. Outliers—in either direction—exert an even greater influence as the number of verdicts shrinks. We should avoid them if we can. Returning to person juries will help do that. Second, fewer jury trials also means fewer opportunities for citizens to serve as jurors. Civil jury service is the closest most Americans ever get to having their own say in expressing and defining community norms.
People who serve on juries consistently say that the experience makes them more appreciative and more trustful of the court system. Every empty jury chair is a missed opportunity to strengthen the bonds between the people and the courts. Third, we should choose inclusiveness and broader representation. We know that smaller juries are more likely to be more homogenous and lack even a single member of a minority group that constitutes a significant part of the community.
We should move in the direction of making sure that the few jury trials we do have are more representative of the community, not less. Fourth, the cost arguments against larger juries have always been weak. The civil jury is a unique and critical part of the U. This is not the place to pinch pennies. And we are already spending less on civil juries than we used to because we have fewer of them. We can afford to invest in the few civil jury trials we are fortunate enough to still have, while we still have them.
A hung jury occurs when a jury deliberates for several hours or days, but are unable to agree on a verdict. In the usual course, the same case will be presented to a new jury. This study identified that longer trials, and jury trials in more culturally diverse city courts, may be more likely to attract a hung jury.
An initial hung verdict does not invalidate a second, unanimous one — it more likely means some of the jurors from the first trial were also in agreement with the final verdict. Australian jurors are forbidden from discussing their deliberations with anyone, including why they came to a decision. A few overseas studies have asked trial judges what verdict they would have come to in jury trials.
A comparison between what the judges said and the real jury verdict reveals a high level of agreement between the two. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Juries force lawyers to talk in a language the lay person understands. Jacqui Horan , Monash University. 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.
The Supreme Court visited the issue of jury size and unanimity one final time in In Burch v Louisiana , the Court found Louisiana's law that allowed criminal convictions on 5 to 1 votes by a six-person jury violated the Sixth Amendment right, incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment, of defendants to a trial by jury. If a jury is to be as small as six, the Court said, the verdict has to be unanimous.
In , the Supreme Court finally reconsidered the anomaly created by Justice Powell's insistence on his idiosyncratic approach to incorporation in Apodaca v Oregon in , which resulted in non-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases being found acceptable in state courts, but not federal courts, under the Sixth Amendment.
In his opinion for the Court, Justice Gorsuch found Louisiana's law allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases to be unconstitutional, and threw out the conviction of a man found guilty by 10 out of 12 jurors.
Questions 1. Does the Court come up with any sound principle that supports its ultimate conclusion that a six-person jury is constitutional, but that a five-person jury violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments? Is there any sound principle that supports the Court drawing the line between 9 to 3 verdicts constitutional and 8 to 4 verdicts unconstitutional?
Does the lack of a sound principle supporting the Court's lines suggest that the Court should have stuck with the common law rules that juries were comprised of 12 persons and had to reach unanimous verdicts? For a minority group that is 20 percent of a community, there is about a 6. Cut the jury to six, and the chance goes up to For a minority group that is 10 percent of a community, cut-ting the jury to six results in over half of the juries The studies that have looked at the impact of jury size on minority representation have confirmed that smaller juries are more likely to have no member of the minority group in question.
But it is also highly significant when a jury is reduced to eight members the modal number in the districts in our study. A study from California found that 20 percent of eight-person juries had no black juror, compared to 8. In another study, a Cook County Circuit Court judge systematically tracked jury composition data from civil jury trials held over six years from to But, in fact, The Court made another serious social-science mistake in Williams and Colgrove when it assumed that the value of community representation would be functionally served so long as a single minority member was on the jury.
Studies show that the ability of a dissenting voice to withstand group pressure is greatly increased when a second dissenting voice is added. With even a single ally, they are much less likely to cave to the group.
In other words, a single person who sees things differently than five others is in a much weaker position than two people who see things differently than ten others. The last remaining argument against larger juries is that they are more likely to hang. Interestingly, the available studies show that while that is true, the effect is much smaller than expected.
Should we take it as signal that the system failed or that it succeeded? No empirical analysis has ever answered, or is ever likely to answer, those questions.
For that reason, we cannot know whether a lower incidence of hung juries is a virtue of smaller juries or a vice. In , the case for returning to the person jury is stronger than ever. In this era of vanishing civil trials, the arguments in favor of person juries are even more compelling.
In contrast, the supposed benefits of smaller juries, never strong, grow weaker every year as courts find more efficient ways to administer the few jury trials we still have. First, whatever doubts people may have had before about the negative effects of smaller juries, the ongoing social-science and empirical research should make clear that those negative effects are real.
Every study since has supported the prior research and the underlying statistical and decision-making theories. No new study or new theory refutes them. The jury- research community remains steadfast in concluding that smaller juries are composed differently and act differently than larger juries. Larger juries are better than smaller juries in ways important to the process and the product. Second, in an age when fewer and fewer civil cases are tried, each civil jury trial takes on added importance.
In , when Williams was decided, 4. These are critical signals to parties and lawyers about how to evaluate similar cases, whether to settle, and on what terms. Outliers — in either direction — exert an even greater influence as the number of verdicts shrinks.
We should avoid them if we can. Returning to person juries will help do that. Third, fewer jury trials also means fewer opportunities for citizens to serve as jurors. Civil jury service is one of the truly exceptional features of the American justice system. Every empty jury chair is a missed opportunity to strengthen the bonds between the people and the courts.
Fourth, we should choose inclusiveness and broader representation. We know that smaller juries are more likely to be more homogenous and lack even a single member of a minority group that constitutes a significant part of the community.
We should move in the direction of making sure that the few jury trials we do have are more representative of the community, not less. Fifth, the cost arguments against larger juries have always been weak. This is not the place to pinch pennies. That was true in the s when the Court and the Judicial Conference first latched onto the cost-savings rationale for smaller juries, 71 and it remains true today.
But even the most cost-conscious should consider modern factors that have already slashed the amount federal courts spend on civil juries. Most obviously, we are already spending comparatively less on civil juries because we have fewer of them.
Since , the civil jury-trial rate has dropped from 4. We can afford to invest in the few civil jury trials we are fortunate enough to still have, while we still have them. It just takes fewer court personnel less time to manage juries than it used to take. To recap, we know that larger juries are better than smaller juries in ways that really matter. And we know that the time and expense saved by seating a smaller jury is minimal at best.
But our data clearly show that most judges are not choosing to seat full juries. How do we change that? How do we flip the model and make person juries the default and not the excep-tion? An essential first step is to keep reminding judges and lawyers of what is at stake.
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