It's been an issue in Florida since 1970 when the Supreme Court ruled that juries could be comprised of less than 12 members. Now a case that may be considered by the Supreme Court will challenge that assumption. In Florida, misdemeanor cases and some felony cases have 6 jurors rather than the standard 12. This can be a potential problem because a smaller jury does not provide a cross-section of the community. Also, smaller juries are more likely to be compliant and side with the majority. The case in question is Deltoro v. Florida and involved a man, William Bolivar Deltoro, convicted by a jury of six of sexually molesting his own daughter. Now, as I stated earlier, normally such a serious case would be tried in front of 12 jurors not six. However, in this instance the case had only six jurors.
It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court decides to hear the case. The notion of small juries providing equal access to justice and equity as a regular 12 member panel is not supported by thirty-plus years of evidence. Steven Calabresi and Michael Saks, writing an opinion piece in the Wall St. Journal, correctly point out,
For more than six centuries, the English common law understanding was that a jury consisted of 12 persons. This understanding was shared in America as well. At Virginia's convention to ratify the Constitution, for example, James Madison and others argued that several characteristics of the jury, including its size, were so well and widely understood, that it was unnecessary to specify them. Gov. Edmund Randolph explained: "There is no suspicion that less than 12 jurors will be thought sufficient."
In 1930, on one of several occasions when the question came before it, the Supreme Court said that "it is not open to question" whether juries may consist of fewer than 12."
It wasn't until 1970 that the idea of a smaller jury was broached. It's time for that idea and practice to go away with a new Supreme Court decision.
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