My question is simple: how did we arrive at the number of jurors in a typical case here in the states? Wiki states simply that “The size of the jury is to provide a “cross-section” of the public. In Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a Florida state jury of six was sufficient, and that “the 12-man panel is not a necessary ingredient of “trial by jury,” and that respondent’s refusal to impanel more than the six members provided for by Florida law did not violate petitioner’s Sixth Amendment rights as applied to the States through the Fourteenth.””
Does it have anything to do with the identical number of apostles? Is it arbitrary? Why not nine? Ten?
Early English precursors to the modern jury frequently used groups of twelve men. Ethelred established groups of twelve thegns to investigate crimes, and Henry II set up juries of twelve freemen to help settle land disputes. The Magna Carta also established the right of an accused to be judged by his peers, which in practice meant juries raised of twelve freemen.
It seems, therefore, that the U.S. preference for juries of twelve people is probably derived from customs in English common law.
The Wikipedia article on Jury trials also mentions that men who sat on English grand juries were at times forbidden from being on the trial jury. Is that a common feature of U.S. state laws, as well?
Secondly, this begs the question: Why did the English use twelve? I’m curious if the precedent came from anywhere traceable or if twelve just “felt right.”
The earliest known codification of the 12-member judicial panel was the Wantage Code, enacted by Æthelred II (“the Unready”), one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, in 997. There have been lots of attempts to trace it back further, since it’s unlikely that Ethelred picked the number out of a hat, but historians have been arguing about it for 200-odd years. It’s possible that it goes all the way back to Charlemagne, but frankly he gets credit for enough stuff already, so screw him.
ETA: It’s not a totally settled issue that the English tradition of a 12-man jury followed directly on from the Wantage Code, since the Normans showed up 70 years later and the formal 12-man jury* did not appear until 1066. The thanes (landowners, basically) who sat on the Wantage panels were more or less appointed for life, so they didn’t really fit our conception of a selected jury.