12 Jurors in Florida

It’s “Time for 12” jurors in Florida, to join 48 states, the Federal government, and 2,000 years of Western Civilization. Florida’s Constitution requires “not fewer than six” jurors at felony trials, but the Florida Legislature by itself can change this to 12 jurors. (Only death penalty cases in Florida require 12 jurors.)

The 1885 Florida Constitution was written when Florida’s population was only 300,000 people, of whom only white men could vote or serve on juries (no women or black men). Six jurors may have been good enough in 1885, because it was just too hard to find 12 white men who could leave their farms and ranches, saddle up a mule, and ride for days along a dirt road to a county courthouse for a felony jury trial. But 130 years later, Florida still has only 6 jurors in felony trials.

Amend Florida Statute 913.10, now, to require 12 jurors in all felony jury trials. There is no need to amend the 1885 / 1968 Florida Constitution, which requires “not fewer than six” jurors. The votes of just 61 Florida Representatives and 21 Florida Senators will finally bring Florida from the 19th century (1885) into the 21st century (2015). While the United States Supreme Court held in 1970 that Florida’s use of only six jurors at felony trials was a choice that was constitutional, it was the wrong choice in 1885 and it is still the wrong choice in 2015; see Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970).

In the Florida courts, the Second District Court of Appeal is begging the Florida Legislature to amend Florida Statute 913.10 to require 12 jurors in every felony trial in Florida. For a detailed, scholarly opinion by Judge Altenbernd on why it is now “Time for 12” jurors in Florida, see : Gonzalez v. State 982 So. 2d 77 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008), Opinion, April 30, 2008.

When Florida prosecutors finally have to convince 12 jurors of guilt, as in the rest of America, prison costs will plunge as weak cases are dropped and realistic, fiscally responsible plea deals are made. It is not “soft on crime” to require Florida prosecutors to prove their charges to 12 jurors at trial, as prosecutors in the other states and Federal courts do every day. “The presumption of innocence,” that long golden thread stitching together centuries of English and American jurisprudence, is dangerously frayed in Florida, where the State only has to overcome the presumption of innocence before 6 jurors.

Furthermore, while constitutional law requires a jury pool to be a fair cross-section of a community, the use of only 6 jurors at trial acts to systematically and statistically exclude or limit blacks from actually sitting on a jury. It’s time to stop allowing Florida prosecutors to make the same speech they could have made for the last 130 years:“Well, Mr. Defendant, we would have just loved to have had a black juror for your trial, but as you can see -- one, two, three, four, five, six -- the jury box is full.”

That excuse would not work with 12 jurors. It does not matter if there are blacks in the jury pool, if the jury box is full. It is statistically impossible to seat racially diverse juries when there are only 6 seats in a jury box; a dangerously unjust game of musical chairs. If there is room at the front of the bus, there is room at the front of the box, the jury box. Room for 12 jurors is room for black jurors; it’s “Time for 12” jurors in Florida.

That “not fewer than six” jurors language in the 1885 Florida Constitution could not have foreseen Florida’s bright future as the Sunshine State; a future in which Florida’s population would increase from 300,000 to 19,000,000 citizens; a future where women could vote and serve on juries; a future where black men could vote and serve on juries; a future beyond 6 white men riding mules to a county courthouse to sit on a jury; an unimaginable future of telephones and automobiles and flying machines; and a world where Florida’s jury of 6 white men could change to a jury of 12 citizens of any race or sex.

It’s “Time for 12” jurors in Florida; amend Florida Statute 913.10, now.