RE: SIX-PERSON JURIES
Florida has a statute that requires the trial of non-capital criminal defendants by a six-person jury. Florida Statutes § 913.10. The United States Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of that statute in 1970. See Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970)(hereafter “The Williams Case”). The Court has agreed to reconsider its decision in the Williams Case sometime during the upcoming term of the Court. See Kian v. Florida, Sup.Ct. docket number 25-6623. The only things the Constitution actually says about the six-person-jury issue in the Williams Case are the following:
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury . . . .
US Const., Art III, Section 2 (adopted 1788)
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,
US Const, Sixth Amendment (adopted 1791)
The Court in the Williams Case misconstrued these “Trial By Jury Clauses.” The Court itself acknowledged that the English common law rule of trial by twelve-person juries had been established and firmly in place by the 14th Century. See The Williams Case, supra, 399 U.S. at 89. The United States Constitution was adopted at least two hundred years later. The Court ignored that unmistakable evidence of the Constitution’s original intention, and instead chose to characterize it as an “accident,” “mystical” or “superstitious.” See The Williams Case, supra, 399 U.S. at 88, 90. Those descriptions of the “trial-by-jury” immediately before the Constitution’s adoption, whether or not accurate, still reflect the governing intention of the United States’ founders when they adopted the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, including the Sixth Amendment, as America’s supreme “Law-of-the-Land.” U.S. Const., Article VI.
But more importantly than that, the Court in the Williams Case misconstrued the underlying purpose of the “trial-by-jury” clauses in the Constitution. Their purpose was to fulfill the basic promise of the English Magna Carta, that no person’s life, liberty, or property will be denied to him or her except “by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.” In that centuries-old historical, but still current context, the more of a person’s “peers” who can be are empaneled by a court to judge that person, the fairer their collective judgment will be to that person. For whatever reason the number of “peers” a court may choose to sit as a “jury” may be selected, even if that number can be criticized as “mystical” or “superstitious” in nature, the number twelve has historically and nearly universally been chosen as superior for the Magna Carta’s purpose over the number six. The Due Process Clauses of the American Constitution are based in substantial part upon the Magna Carta’s Clause.
The Florida statute in the upcoming case is contrary to the manifest tenor of the United States Constitution. In other words. the statute is repugnant to that superior document. The Williams Case upholding that statute was “egregiously erroneous,” and should therefore be overruled. The statute itself should be declared unconstitutional and “void.”
/s/ Dan D. Rhea
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