Dear mj7014-ga;
Thank you for allowing me to answer your interesting question. The
excerpts below should explain the practice of appoint twelve jury
members to the extent an explanation is possible. First, however, it
is important to note that not all US jurisdictions actually require
twelve jurors:
Arizona: Permits the use of eight person juries except in capital
cases or when the possible sentence is 30 years or more.
Connecticut: Permits the use of six-person juries, except in capital
cases which require twelve-person juries unless the defendant agrees
otherwise.
Florida: Permits six-person juries to hear felonies, except in capital
cases which require a twelve-person jury.
Indiana: Permits six-person juries to hear felonies in municipal and
county court, but not at the circuit or superior court levels.
Kansas: Felony trials must start with a twelve-member jury.
Kentucky: Permits six-person juries to hear felonies at the district
level, but not the circuit level.
Louisiana: Requires the use of twelve-person juries when punishment
necessarily is confinement at hard labor, but uses six jurors if the
possible punishment may be confinement at hard labor.
Massachusetts: Permits six-person juries at the Boston Municipal court
and the district court levels.
Utah: Requires eight-person juries and makes no exception for capital cases.
Washington: Allows for a jury of less than twelve but with different
restrictions. Also, in Washington, a defendant may elect to have the
case tried before a six-member jury, except in capital cases.
Wisconsin: In Wisconsin, both parties may agree to any number less than twelve.
The remaining states and the District of Columbia require juries of
twelve-members for felony trials. In criminal misdemeanor trials and
civil trials, more states permit juries of less than twelve members.
. . . . .
As for the historical practice the issue seems to be one that has its
roots in ancient English tradition:
?The English king ?Ethelred the Unready? set up an early legal system
through the Wantage Code of Ethelred, one provision of which stated
that the twelve leading ?thegns? (minor nobles) of each ?wapentake? (a
small district) were required to swear that they would investigate
crimes without a bias.?
WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial
?The most interesting feature of the organization was the aristocratic
jury of presentment which initiated the prosecution of suspected
persons in the court of the wapentake. In what is known as the Wantage
Code of Ethelred, one passage states that the twelve leading thegns in
each wapentake were to go out from the court and swear that they would
neither accuse the innocent nor protect the guilty. Thus the sworn
jury, hitherto unknown to English law, came into being in a most
important document in English legal history.?
HISTORY OF ENGLAND: THE ANGLO SAXON PERIOD
http://www.britannia.com/history/narsaxhist2.html
?The twelve person jury dates to early English common law. Jury size
in England was fixed at twelve persons by the middle of the fourteenth
century. By the eighteenth century, the same was true of the American
colonies. Although many theories have been advanced to explain the
origin of the twelve-person jury, it is still unclear how this
requirement gained importance.
As the United States Supreme Court made clear in a series of cases
beginning in 1970, the federal Constitution does not require juries to
have twelve members in all cases. The practice of having twelve jurors
was apparently an "historical accident unrelated to the great purposes
which gave rise to the jury in the first place." According to the
Court, the real test of the constitutionality of jury size is whether
jury size affects the essential function of the jury.
That essential function, according to the court, is to ensure that
cases are resolved using the common sense judgment of the community
through community participation. This means that the jury must be
large enough to do the following: (1) Promote deliberation free from
outside attempts of intimidation, and (2) Provide a fair possibility
for obtaining a representative cross section of the community.
Thus, states are free to have juries as small as six, so far as the
federal constitution is concerned. Any number below six, however,
would be unconstitutional, because the jury would then be too small to
meet the requirement that there be a fair chance that a cross-section
of the community will be represented on the jury. Moreover, states
cannot circumvent this limit by allowing six person juries to deliver
non-unanimous verdicts in criminal cases.?
IMPROVING THE JURY SYSTEM: REDUCING JURY SIZE
http://w3.uchastings.edu/plri/spr96tex/jurysiz.html
More recently, on December 13, 1994 the Committee on Rules of Practice
and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States surveyed
the issue of juries in the United States and issued their report.
Bearing in mind that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 48 allows both
federal district courts to use six-person juries in federal civil
cases the Committee concluded that:
Twelve person juries are more stable and deliberative.
Larger juries were more representative of the interests of minorities
Larger juries are not substantially prohibitive in terms of cost
A jury smaller than twelve individuals did not enhance the courts? efficiency
I hope you find that my answer exceeds your expectations. If you have
any questions about my research please post a clarification request
prior to rating the answer. Otherwise I welcome your rating and your
final comments and I look forward to working with you again in the
near future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.
Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga ? Google Answers Researcher
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