It is safe to assume that jury deliberations may take longer in complicated cases with multiple defendants, counts or charges, which will require longer jury instructions. Because jury verdicts must be unanimous in criminal cases in most jurisdictions, it is not uncommon for deliberations to stall or reach an impasse.
If a jury sends a note saying they are deadlocked, the judge can give them an instruction urging them to try harder to reach an agreement. The judge also often informs the jury that, if they cannot reach a verdict, the case will likely be tried over again before another jury, who will probably hear the same evidence and have similar difficulties.
The Allen Charge comes from the U. United States. The case involved year-old defendant Alexander Allen who was tried and convicted twice of murder for killing year-old Philip Henson in Arkansas. The Judge instructed the jury to re-examine their thoughts, leading to what is now known as the Allen Charge.
In Ballew, the Supreme Court was determined to answer whether a jury with fewer than six individuals "inhibite[ed] the functioning of the jury as an institution to a significant degree, and, if so, whether any state interest counterbalances and justifies this disruption.
First, the Court looked at contemporary research demonstrating that smaller juries were less likely to facilitate effective group deliberation. Third, the likelihood of a hung jury decreases as the juries reduce in size; this disadvantages the defense. Hung juries generally only occur where one or two jurors are unconvinced of guilt. He also wrote, "Neither the validity nor the methodology employed by the studies cited was subjected to the traditional testing mechanisms of the adversary process.
In Gonzalez v. Florida , the Calebresi Amici Brief raises several issues with the Ballew decision. Ballew abandoned the functional equivalence test used in Williams in favor of a bright-line rule that six-person juries were constitutional, but five-person juries were unconstitutional.
However, this bright-line rule seems arbitrary given that the Court relied on studies showing that the six-person juries perform worse than twelve-personjuries. Here are some of the studies comparing six-and twelve-person juries which were cited by the Court in Ballew :. Critics have wondered why Blackmun did not overturn the holding in Williams given the social science evidence that six-person juries do not deliberate as well as twelve-person juries.
As Shari Diamond puts it, the jury is supposed to be a representative sample of the community. The question becomes one of degree; specifically, how much less representative of a community population is a jury of six likely to be than a jury of twelve? Many observers expressed surprise at the homogeneity of the Zimmerman jury.
Modern empirical sampling theory demonstrates that juries of six members are much more susceptible to outlier effects, such as an all-female jury. The chart below shows a normally distributed, randomly drawn jury sample and the deviation from the mean of those juries in terms of the number of women. The less peaked distribution for six-member juries is a visual depiction of samples with a greater chance of outliers than those for twelve-member juries, which cluster around the female population mean.
Six-member juries can produce clearly visible effects that would be remotely unlikely in a twelve-member jury. 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. During the jury selection process the judge will provide an estimated duration of the trial based on their experience.
If the trial duration causes any personal hardships for you, please inform the judge of your concerns during the jury selection process. In some cases, you may receive a one-time deferral and instead serve during a future month. Even if deferred, you will still be required to appear at a later date. You can receive reporting instructions by either calling the Jury Information Line at , or by checking My Reporting Status from our website.
Either way, you will need your nine-digit participant number and zip code. After check in, you will be directed to a courtroom. Once all jurors arrive, the judge will inform you about the case, the parties involved, and will swear you in for duty. After swearing in, a process called voir dire will begin. This is a process where the judge and attorneys will ask questions to you and other members of the jury panel so that they can make sure the final jurors will be fair and impartial.
Questions may include details about your profession, prior jury service, knowledge of the case or defendant s , personal interests in the outcome of the trial, or about your opinions or experiences. This selection process will vary depending on the case. Generally, jury selection begins at approximately a. If you are not selected for jury duty you will be released for the day but will need to continue calling the Jury Information Line each week until your designated term is over.
If you are selected for jury duty, the trial will begin and the judge will provide additional instructions for you. A petit jury is what you traditionally think of when serving on a jury.
This form is used to decide facts in civil and criminal trials. The petit jury listens to evidence and arguments presented by both parties during a trial and returns a verdict. A grand jury does not determine guilt or innocence, but instead whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime was committed. Evidence is normally presented only by an attorney for the government, and the grand jury must determine from this evidence alone whether a person should have formal charges filed against them by the government.
If the grand jury finds probable cause, then it will return a written statement of the charge called an indictment. For more information on petit and grand juries, please refer to the Jury Handbooks section of our website. Serving as a juror is an important responsibility.
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