Tampa Bay Times10%
Supreme Court could end 6-person juries. For Florida, it would be a seismic shift 31%
By Dan Sullivan47%
7/13/2026, 11:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Genetic Fallacy, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 7.8% saturation with 86 hits. Analysis detected 508 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,096 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.6% and a BS Rank of 31% (10,629 of 15,282 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 69.60% of the article peer group.
Four years ago, Palm Beach County prosecutors charged a local chiropractor with practicing medicine with a suspended license amid allegations of inappropriate contact with patients.
The chiropractor, Hamed Kian, pleaded not guilty and took his case to trial.
Like thousands of similarly charged defendants, he went before a jury of six people.
They found him guilty.
A judge sentenced him to a year in prison plus five years’ probation.
While that could have been the end of the matter, the U.S.
Supreme Court recently took an interest in Kian’s case.
Late last month, the high court agreed to hear arguments from Kian’s lawyers, who say he had a right to a jury of 12 people, which he would have received in most other states.
Florida law, which allows six people in most felony cases, is unconstitutional, they say.
What the court ultimately decides could potentially upend thousands of criminal convictions and overturn a long-standing practice that legal historians say is rooted in racist laws that took hold after the Reconstruction era.
The Kian case has already created ripples through the state’s trial courts, including in at least a handful of Tampa cases.
An attorney for Brianna Moore, the University of Tampa student accused of aggravated manslaughter in the death of her newborn, this month asked in a written court motion that a jury in her case be composed of 12 people.
Hillsborough Public Defender Lisa McLean, whose office represents defendants, has also filed requests for 12-person juries in several pending cases.
Their standard motion acknowledges that judges are unlikely to defy state law and grant their request.
But, noting the pending Supreme Court case, McLean’s office wrote that they ask anyway to “preserve this issue for future review.”
A legal dispute rooted in constitutional history
Kian’s initial appeal went to the West Palm Beach-based 4th District Court of Appeal, which upheld his conviction without comment.
Public defenders there asked early this year for the U.S.
Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the jury in his case.
Their brief outlined the history of Florida’s use of six-member juries.
It’s a practice that began in 1877, shortly after the last federal troops left the state in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The brief states that smaller juries marked the dawn of the Jim Crow era, which saw new laws designed to restrict or eliminate the participation of African Americans in public affairs.
Today, Florida is one of only six states that use juries of fewer than 12 for certain cases.
Here, the law mandates six people for what are known as “non-capital” felony cases.
Only in cases where death is a possible punishment does the state use panels of 12.
The U.S.
Supreme Court once before upheld Florida’s smaller juries.
In a 1970 case known as Williams v.
Florida, the high court found that while most juries in America’s founding era were made up of 12 people, the Constitution’s authors did not specify a number.
The court called the number 12 “a historically accidental figure.”
This time, though, the court might rule differently.
At least one sitting Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, has indicated in past opinions that he may be open to overturning the Williams case.
Gorsuch dissented from his colleagues in a 2022 Arizona case, where the court declined to take up an appeal from a man who challenged his conviction in that state by an eight-person jury.
Gorsuch, writing that he would have accepted the man’s case, wrote that the Williams decision “was wrong the day it was decided” and “remains wrong today.”
The ruling upholding six-person juries, he wrote, contravened the Constitution’s original meaning and hundreds of years of precedent.
“For almost all of this nation’s history and centuries before that, the right to trial by jury for serious criminal offenses meant the right to a trial before 12 members of the community,” Gorsuch wrote.
“In 1970, this court abandoned that ancient promise and enshrined in its place bad social science parading as law.”
Gorsuch echoed the same sentiments in another case in 2024 — this one, like Kian’s, originating from Palm Beach County and challenging the use of six-person juries.
“Florida does what the Constitution forbids because of us,” Gorsuch wrote then.
Attorneys in the office of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier urged the Supreme Court this spring not to take up Kian’s case.
They noted in a brief that Florida has roughly 5,000 criminal cases pending on direct appeal.
Many of those cases are rooted in guilty verdicts issued by six-person juries.
“Not only was Williams correctly decided,” they wrote, “overruling it would imperil thousands of criminal convictions in Florida and five other states that for more than 50 years have relied on its rule.”
Lawyers brace for new trials
While the high court agreed to hear Kian’s case last month, it remains uncertain whether a majority of the nine justices will favor striking down Florida’s six-person juries.
The case is set to be heard in the court’s 2026-2027 term.
A decision may not come for another year.
Already, though, the state’s defense attorneys are readying for a seismic shift in criminal justice jurisprudence.
The Moore case, which is set for trial in November, is unlikely to see a jury of 12.
But her attorney, Jonah Dickstein, drew from arguments in Kian’s case to ask for one.
He argued that larger panels deliberate longer, have better recall of evidence and showcase greater expression of minority views.
“The mini-jury of solely six jurors is not merely unconstitutional,” Dickstein wrote.
“It is at its root affirmatively anti-Constitutional.“
The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said in a news release that it plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of 12-person juries for all serious criminal cases.
“The court’s decision to review this case is a long-overdue opportunity to restore for all Floridians a foundational constitutional right — the right to a jury of 12 — and to eliminate from Florida’s criminal justice system a practice rooted in a discriminatory past," wrote the group’s president, Aaron Wayt.
Paul Figueroa, president of the Hillsborough Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the organization has advised local defense attorneys to raise the issue for their clients now.
That way, if the law is overturned, those convicted with juries of six could have an argument for a new trial.
“Simply put, 12 people are better equipped than six to ensure that verdicts are fair, thoughtful, and representative of the community,” Figueroa said.
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