U.S. SUPREME COURT AGREES TO HEAR CHALLENGE TO FLORIDA’S SIX-PERSON CRIMINAL JURIES

Despite warnings that it could jeopardize thousands of criminal convictions, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to weigh a challenge to Florida’s use of six-person juries.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier argued the Supreme Court got it right in 1970 when justices upheld the use of six-person juries for non-capital cases in Williams v Florida.

“For nearly as long as states have had a Sixth Amendment duty to provide criminal jury trials, this Court’s message to the people of Florida has been clear: the jury structure that they have settled on for a century and a half fulfills that duty.”

Florida has 5,000 criminal convictions pending appeal, Uthmeier warned, and he noted that five other states — Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Utah — follow a similar practice.

“Overruling Williams would force the use of public resources to conduct thousands of retrials on top of the trials already pending and might well result in the release of convicted criminals into the public.”

Justices last month agreed to hear an appeal from West Palm Beach chiropractor Hamed Kian, who was convicted of practicing without a license four years ago.

In October 2025, the Fourth District Court of Appeal, without comment, rejected Kiam’s argument that the lack of a 12-person jury violated his Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.

Kian’s attorneys argued in their Supreme Court brief that the concept of a 12-member jury originated in 1215 with the Magna Carta and that’s what the Sixth Amendment framers contemplated.

“Petitioner submits that Williams was incorrectly decided and is contrary to the understanding of the Sixth Amendment at the time of the Founding,” his attorneys argued.

At least one justice, Neil Gorsuch, agrees. When the Supreme Court declined in 2022 to hear an Arizona defendant’s challenge to an eight-member jury, Gorsuch dissented.

Calling Williams “wrong the day it was decided,” Gorsuch wrote that “Florida does what the Constitution forbids because of us.”

Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Aaron Wyat called the Supreme Court’s decision to revisit Williams, “long overdue.”

Larger juries are more likely to reach a just outcome, Wyat said.

“I think the research shows that they deliberate longer, more evidence can be recalled correctly, and you get a more diverse cross section of the community.”

A 12-member jury is also less likely to be swayed by a single member, Wyat said.

“Any criminal defense attorney who has ever had an attorney on the jury knows that you end up talking to that one person, the attorney,” Wyat said.

Anyone who is concerned about retrying cases is taking a “functionalist” approach to justice, Wyat contends.

“We had Miranda, we had Crawford, we had Gideon, and I’m sure people made the same arguments,” he said. “The justice system survived.”