In the "woman at 8d" episode, Bull said they got 10 out of 12 jurors on their side and he wanted to close the other 2.
But I thought in law you only need 1 out of the 12 to vote not guilty, it has to be a full decision or else the client is acquitted no?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_48
Rule 48. Number of Jurors; Verdict; Polling
(a) Number of Jurors. A jury must begin with at least 6 and no more than 12 members, and each juror must participate in the verdict unless excused under Rule 47(c).
(b) Verdict. Unless the parties stipulate otherwise, the verdict must be unanimous and must be returned by a jury of at least 6 members.
(c) Polling. After a verdict is returned but before the jury is discharged, the court must on a party's request, or may on its own, poll the jurors individually. If the poll reveals a lack of unanimity or lack of assent by the number of jurors that the parties stipulated to, the court may direct the jury to deliberate further or may order a new trial.
I'm not a lawyer here so I may be wrong but I think unless you've got unanimous vote of all saying either guilty or not guilty you end up with what is called a hung jury. Then the case it declared a mistrial. It is then up to the prosecutor's office if they want to try the case again. (Expense, time, do they think they will win the next time, etc.)
Since it wasn't all 12 jurors saying not guilty, the whole "double jeopardy" thing isn't in effect and the defendant can be retried. So the defendant would rather just be declared not guilty by all 12 jurors than have go through another trial. At the new trial they would have to try to win over a new set of jurors and who knows if new evidence is found, etc.
Of course from the defendant's point of view a mistrial and then retrial would be better than being found guilty, but they are aiming for not guilty.
Apparently Oregon and Louisiana allow majority (10-2) verdicts except in certain cases.
It's the same here in the UK. After a certain time the judge can accept a majority verdict.
I've served on multiple juries(lucky me, nobody in my family has ever been called for service and yet I've have been four times and sat on more than one jury each time) and not one of them has ever come back unanimous and every time the person/people were found guilty. one judge waited about six hours for us to be unanimous, called us back in, requested 10-2, and that was the longest any of te judges waited for a unanimous before dropping to a 10-2 split. While a judge wants a unanimous inititally, they'll drop down to a split pretty darn fast, in the UK at least. Now none of these were murder trials, but rather hefty drug charges (10s of kilos of cocaine) and grevious bodily harm/attempted murder, as well as the assualt of a police officer with a knife after the attempted murder, so maybe it works differently during a murder trial but otherwise, judges seem pretty happy to accept split.
shareBut I thought in law you only need 1 out of the 12 to vote not guilty, it has to be a full decision or else the client is acquitted no?
I don't think you need all 12 in a civil case.
shareNo, a full decision one way is guilty, a full decision the other way is acquitted. 10-2 is a hung jury with no decision & they have to start all over again w/a new trial and a new jury if the prosecution wants to refile.
share