Over in MPSIMS, a Doper is telling about her experiences as an alternate on a 6-person jury. People wer asking questions about jury trials there. And that got me to wondering: What are the constitutional requirements regarding trial by jury? Some speciifics:
What are the minima for jury trials, to be acceptable?
When is a unanimous verdict requred?
When is a jury required in a civil case, other than in Federal court?
When a jury trial is not as of right, what are the due process requirements?
What’s the deal with grand juries sometimes being required and sometimes not, and again, what are the due process requirements when they aren’t required?
I’ll be there’s lots more worth asking on this general topic, but that will do for starters.
Everything you need to know about Trial by Jury .
Polycarp:
What’s the deal with grand juries sometimes being required and sometimes not, and again, what are the due process requirements when they aren’t required?
On my way to lunch, but **Bricker ** and I wrote this a while back: Who invented the grand jury?
On a more serious note, the Seventh Amendment gives a right to a jury trial in the federal courts for common law matters, where the amount in issue exceeds $20. That provision has not been applied to the individual states under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, so you would have to check the individual state constitutions to determine if they have constitutional requirements for juries in civil matters.
Polycarp:
What are the minima for jury trials, to be acceptable?
Regarding criminal trials:
The Attributes of the Jury.—The Attributes and Function of the Jury.-It was previously the position of the Court that the right to a jury trial meant “a trial by jury as understood and applied at common law, and includes all the essential elements as they were recognized in this country and England when the Constitution was adopted.”52 It had therefore been held that this included trial by a jury of 12 persons53 who must reach a unanimous verdict54 and that the jury trial must be held during the first court proceeding and not de novo at the first appellate stage.55 However, as it extended the guarantee to the States, the Court indicated that at least some of these standards were open to re–examination,56 and in subsequent cases it has done so. In Williams v. Florida,57 the Court held that the fixing of jury size at 12 was “a historical accident” which, while firmly established when the Sixth Amendment was proposed and ratified, was not required as an attribute of the jury system, either as a matter of[p.1409]common–law background58 or by any ascertainment of the intent of the framers.59 Being bound neither by history nor framers’ intent, the Court thought the “relevant inquiry . . . must be the function that the particular feature performs and its relation to the purposes of the jury trial.” The size of the jury, the Court continued, bore no discernable relationship to the purposes of jury trial—the prevention of oppression and the reliability of factfinding. Furthermore, there was little reason to believe that any great advantage accrued to the defendant by having a jury composed of 12 rather than six, which was the number at issue in the case, or that the larger number appreciably increased the variety of viewpoints on the jury. A jury should be large enough to promote group deliberation, free from outside attempts at intimidation, and to provide a fair possibility that a cross–section of the community will be represented on it, but the Court did not speculate whether there was a minimum permissible size and it recognized the propriety of conditioning jury size on the seriousness of the o60
When the unanimity rule was reconsidered, the division of the Justices was such that different results were reached for state and federal courts.61 Applying the same type of analysis as that used in Williams, four Justices acknowledged that unanimity was a common–law rule but observed for the reasons reviewed in Williams that it seemed more likely than not that the framers of the Sixth Amendment had not intended to preserve the requirement within the term “jury.” Therefore, the Justices undertook a functional[p.1410]analysis of the jury and could not discern that the requirement of unanimity materially affected the role of the jury as a barrier against oppression and as a guarantee of a commonsense judgment of laymen. The Justices also determined that the unanimity requirement is not implicated in the constitutional requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and is not necessary to preserve the feature of the requisite cross–section representation on the jury.62 Four dissenting Justices thought that omitting the unanimity requirement would undermine the reasonable doubt standard, would permit a majority of jurors simply to ignore those interpreting the facts differently, and would permit oppression of dissenting minorities.63 Justice Powell, on the other hand, thought that unanimity was mandated in federal trials by history and precedent and that it should not be departed from; however, because it was the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which imposed the basic jury–trial requirement on the States, he did not believe that it was necessary to impose all the attributes of a federal jury on the States. He therefore concurred in permitting less–than–unanimous verdicts in state courts.64
Supplement:
Amendment VI. Rights in Criminal Prosecutions | U.S. Constitution Annotated | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
When is a unanimous verdict requred?
See above.
When is a jury required in a civil case, other than in Federal court?
Courts in Which the Guarantee Applies.—The [Seventh] Amendment governs only courts which sit under the authority of the United States,16 including courts in the territories17 and the District of Columbia,18 and does not apply generally to state courts.19 But when a state court is enforcing a federally created right, of which the right to trial by jury is a substantial part, the States may not eliminate trial by jury as to one or more elements.20 Ordinarily, a federal court enforcing a state–created right will follow its own rules with regard to the allocation of functions between judge and jury, a rule the Court based on the “interests” of the federal court system, eschewing reliance on the Seventh Amendment but noting its influence.21
Amendment VII. Civil Trial Rights | U.S. Constitution Annotated | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
and see , http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/413/836.html (“A trial by jury is not constitutionally required in this state civil proceeding”)
When a jury trial is not as of right, what are the due process requirements?
I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Are you asking about due process rights during bench trials?
What’s the deal with grand juries sometimes being required and sometimes not, and again, what are the due process requirements when they aren’t required?
Because of the Fifth Amendment, the federal legal system has to use grand juries to bring charges, at least for certain offenses. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that charges for all capital and “infamous” crimes be brought by an indictment returned by a grand jury. The amendment has been interpreted to require that an indictment be used to charge federal felonies, unless a defendant waives his or her right to be indicted by a grand jury. The Supreme Court has held that this part of the Fifth Amendment is not binding on the states, so they can use grand juries or not, as they wish.
(If a defendant waives his or her right to be indicted by a grand jury, the prosecutor can charge them by using an "information." An information is simply a pleading that accuses the defendants of committing crimes, just as an indictment does. The difference between an indictment and an information is that a grand jury must approve an indictment, while a prosecutor can issue an information without the grand jury's approval or, for that matter, without ever showing the information to the grand jury.)
Since most federal prosecutions involve felony charges, grand juries play an important role in enforcing federal criminal law. The sections below describe the essential aspects of federal grand juries.
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/fedj/fedj.htm
