In a twelve-member jury, however, that chance drops to less than. Other minority groups present in the community also demonstrate much greater chance of representation in the jury as its size increases, and it may be presumed, while it is much more difficult to categorize than race or ethnicity, that a broad array of experiences and backgrounds are also better represented.
Michael Saks has studied view representativeness at length, and he finds that as jury size decreases, verdict and award unpredictability increase. Verdict and award predictability is significant if we assume that the overall population has a distinct view of the correct verdict and award amount. Since twelve-member juries tend to reduce outlier awards and conform more strictly to the mean population verdict decision and award than six-member juries, twelve-member juries are more representative of their community in the trial outcome reached.
For reference, the visual effect of jury size on a normal distribution of awards is shown below, although the actual curve varies somewhat from the standard normal distribution.
In , Michael Saks whose empirical work influenced the Ballew opinion and Mollie Marti conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies that examined the differences between six- and twelve-person juries.
For the most part, this study confirmed the empirical work presented in Ballew. Saks and Marti found that larger juries were more likely to contain members of minority groups, have a hung jury, and accurately recall trial testimony an indicator of juror accuracy. Modern research on this topic has continued to examine how having juries with diverse racial compositions affects jury deliberation. 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.
If the grand jury determines there is enough evidence, an indictment will be issued against the defendant. Main content Types of Juries There are two types of juries serving different functions in the federal trial courts: trial juries, also known as petit juries, and grand juries. Trial Jury A trial jury, also known as a petit jury, decides whether the defendant committed the crime as charged in a criminal case, or whether the defendant injured the plaintiff in a civil case.
Throughout most of the country, 12 jurors determine the guilt or innocence of suspects in felony trials. 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. 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.
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.
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