Opinion ID: 1135639
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: waiver of six-person jury

Text: While acknowledging the case law approving a waiver of the right to a jury trial as discussed above, Blair asks us to conclude that the right to a six-member jury in a criminal case cannot be waived. Blair relies principally upon the decision and analysis in Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223, 98 S.Ct. 1029, 55 L.Ed.2d 234 (1978), where the United States Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of a five-person jury mandated by Georgia law. Id. at 226, 98 S.Ct. at 1031-32. Ballew objected to the five-person jury mandated by law and unsuccessfully moved for a twelve-person jury. Id. at 227, 98 S.Ct. at 1032. Upon review, and after consulting numerous scholarly studies on jury size, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the five-person jury scheme and concluded: [T]he purpose and functioning of the jury in a criminal trial is seriously impaired, and to a constitutional degree, by a reduction in size to below six members. We readily admit that we do not pretend to discern a clear line between six members and five. But the assembled data raise substantial doubt about the reliability and appropriate representation of panels smaller than six. Because of the fundamental importance of the jury trial to the American system of criminal justice, any further reduction that promotes inaccurate and possibly biased decision making, that causes untoward differences in verdicts, and that prevents juries from truly representing their communities, attains constitutional significance. Id. at 239, 98 S.Ct. at 1038-39. In its analysis, the Court identified five issues of concern regarding the wisdom and constitutionality of a reduction in jury size below six. Id. at 232, 98 S.Ct. at 1035. The Court presented a compelling case for its conclusion that the states must provide a criminal defendant with at least a six-person jury. The Court explained that the studies indicated progressively smaller juries are less likely to foster effective group deliberation; raised doubts about the accuracy of the results achieved by smaller and smaller panels; suggested that the verdicts of jury deliberation in criminal cases will vary as juries become smaller and that the variance inordinately disfavored the defense; found a decreasing presence of minority viewpoints, i.e., jurors unconvinced of guilt, in smaller juries (lessening chances of hung juries); and identified methodological problems tending to mask differences between the operation of smaller and larger juries. Id. at 232-37, 98 S.Ct. at 1035-38. Interestingly, this analysis and the social studies on jury size and small group dynamics cited by the Court also provided support for the traditional twelve-person jury, a requirement the Court had refused to mandate in Williams v. Florida . The State, while acknowledging the reasoning of Ballew, contends that its analysis is inapplicable here where Blair knew exactly how many and which jurors he was getting. The State contends these circumstances distinguish this case from Ballew and that Court's concern that a mandatory five-person jury might impair a defendant's chance of getting a jury representative of a fair cross-section of the community. We agree with the State. Waiver was not an issue in Ballew, a distinction we consider determinative. Unlike the situation in Ballew, a five-person jury was not imposed upon Blair over his objection or mandated by Florida law. This crucial distinction between a mid-trial waiver by the defendant of a full six-person jury, as opposed to the imposition of a five-person jury by the state, leads us to conclude that Ballew should not control the outcome here. Of the authorities discussed above, we find the reasoning of Patton, as well as our own decisions permitting a six-person jury in capital cases where the death penalty has been waived, most persuasive here. The Patton court concluded that criminal defendants have the power to waive a trial by a constitutional jury and submit to trial by a jury of less than twelve persons. 281 U.S. at 312, 50 S.Ct. at 263. Blair was in virtually the same situation as Patton, albeit with a six-member jury as mandated by our state constitution. While we recognize that the waiver in Patton was from twelve to eleven, rather than six to five, we believe the principle is essentially the same: the right to waive and accept less than the law provides. Further, while acknowledging the strong case for a six-person minimum made in Ballew, we also note that Court's observation that there was no magic ingredient in the number six but that a line must be drawn somewhere in defining the jury that a state must provide to a defendant entitled to a jury trial. At issue here is not the content of the constitutional right to a jury of a particular size. That is not in dispute. Both the Florida Constitution and Ballew place that number at six, and it is undisputed that Florida has provided Blair with the right to a six-person jury. The question here, however, is whether the right, once defined, may be waived, in whole or in part. As noted in the discussion above, it has been universally acknowledged that the right to a jury trial may be waived entirely. That being so, it would be anomalous indeed to hold that a defendant could waive an entire jury, but not waive the presence of one juror. Based upon the analysis in Patton, we conclude that there is no constitutional bar to a defendant's waiver of the presence and participation of one of the six jurors in a criminal trial.