The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Kian v. Florida, a case that could end the practice of trying serious felony cases with six-person juries in Florida and five other states. The petitioner, Hamed Kian, a Jupiter, Florida chiropractor, was convicted by a six-person jury on five counts of practicing chiropractic medicine with a suspended license and sentenced to more than a year in prison. His lawyers argue that the Sixth and 14th Amendments guarantee a 12-person jury for serious criminal charges, leaning on the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana, which held that the jury-trial right must be understood the way it was at the time the Constitution was written — when “jury” meant 12 people, not fewer.
On August 13, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and NAACP filed an amicus brief in the case laying out the law’s origin: Florida’s six-person jury statute was enacted by former Confederates in the state legislature during the post-Reconstruction era, specifically to make it easier to seat all-white juries once Black citizens gained the right to serve. Cutting jury size from 12 to six meaningfully reduced the odds that a Black juror would be included at all, which is exactly the outcome its drafters were after.
A Law Built for a Different Purpose Than the One It Serves Today
Florida has defended six-person juries for decades on cost and efficiency grounds — smaller juries are cheaper to seat and faster to deliberate. Those are real, practical considerations for a court system managing a heavy caseload. But they don’t erase the law’s origin, and the LDF’s brief argues that origin matters directly to the constitutional question: a rule adopted specifically to dilute Black jurors’ influence on verdicts is difficult to defend as a neutral administrative choice, regardless of how long it’s been in place.
What’s Actually at Stake
Beyond Florida, a ruling against the state could unsettle jury laws in Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Utah, and Arizona, which also allow six-person juries in non-capital cases. Research on jury behavior consistently shows that smaller juries deliberate for less time, recall fewer details of trial evidence, and are more vulnerable to a single dominant voice steering the outcome — differences that matter regardless of the law’s history. Arguments are expected this fall.
🔥 The Six-Person Jury Rule, Explained:
What do you think? Should the Supreme Court require all states to use 12-person juries for serious felony cases, or is a six-person jury a reasonable modern efficiency regardless of its history? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
