But a hung jury can be retried infinitely

I think hung should be just as good as acquittal, or at least ONE other try or something different than potentially infinite retries until the prosecutor gets a tap on the shoulder to move on

I'm far from a punitive-justice kind of person, but arguing that a single dissenting juror should be sufficient to acquit strikes me as not at all obvious.

As long as I can convince one in twelve that I'm innocent, I should be considered innocent?

So the idea is to force 12 people to convince each other of one idea or the other.

The jury is evenly split, and Athena adds a final vote for innocence, calling it her precedent.

It is unfortunate that the United States did not follow this ancient judicial custom EDIT: to acquit if half the jury refuses to convict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia#The_Eumenides

(I live in a midsize U.S. town that happens to have the oldest community theater that performs Greek plays in mask every year.)

Requiring a simple majority of the jury for a serious criminal conviction, but splitting ties for the defense, rather than the US practice of requiring a unanimous verdict for conviction?

You said nothing to contradict the GP. If someone is on trial, all they need is one of the twelve to not be convinced of guilt. Your phrasing of "force" that one person to change their mind is absolutely insane to me.

Judges aim for consensus, and juries are intended to debate/discuss until they can reach it. So the complaint about "well, prosecutors can just keep trying" rings a little more hollow in that case.

(Again, there are a ton of other reasonable complaints--bullshit forensic "science", the fact that expert witnesses cost money that defendants don't have, mandatory minimum sentences, federal prosecutors' aversion to risking losses at trial, the awful penal system, etc. But this is a weird one to be hung up on, I think.)

On the flip side, the verdict does not have to be unanimous.

From cornell law website:

> A not guilty verdict does not mean that the defendant truly is innocent but rather that for legal purposes they will be found not guilty because the prosecution did not meet the burden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven

This turned out to be a big deal because of the trial of the Lockerbie bombers who blew up a Pan-Am flight over Scotland and were ultimately tried under Scots law. There was a real possibility that the bombers could have gone free with a "not proven" verdict.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Court_in_the_Netherla...

> https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/apr/07/lockerbie

There are aspects of how that trial unfolded that have long been subject of concern even from victims families (Dr Jim Swire famously); politically a "not proven" verdict would have been so unpalatable I'm honestly not sure how much chance there ever was of that occurring - politics is how we ended up in the bizarre Scottish courtroom in the Netherlands situation in the first place. Even the way in which the judges deliberated is not standard for a typical High Court of Justiciary case in its normal home in Scotland.

Moral of the story is: Sometimes you need to give people the button they really want to push, even if it does nothing.

...Or they haven't been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.

You realize as a juror, your job isn't to kowtow to the state. You're literally the last bulwark between said state and your fellow man. If anything, ypu need to be picking hard at any case you get presented, especially if it smells like a political/railroad case.

Not saying i disagree with you....

Implies "I made up my mind before going in."

I'm more "Convince me that this man is the only person who could possibly have done what you allege."

If they presented no compelling evidence that he did it, and as someone with technical understanding, I'd have questions to raise if things did not sufficiently add up.

Sorry, deliberations will continue until either the prosecution or these other jurors get with the program I'm not putting someone away while I entertain a reasonable doubt.

1. That outcomes should be binary, i.e. "guilty" or "innocent" with no mistrials. 2. That outcomes should be decided by unanimous, supermajority, majority, or some other arrangements.

I don't think either of those arguments are especially fundamental. My point was only that it's a bit hyperbolic to view the whole hung jury rule as some sort of Bill of Rights violation.

A hung jury is just one of the causes of a mistrial; and the net effect of a mistrial is that no verdict is reached. The common law has no prohibition on retrying a defendant after a mistrial.

Jury nullification, as controversial as it is, is an important escape valve and check on the system. Prosecutors and judges just don't like it because it threatens stare decisis.

After two mistrials (for failure to reach a consensus) it’d appear that reasonable minds may differ and the case must not have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Another factor, which is more common in state courts, is the lesser charge consideration. Upon a retrial, the judge can instruct the jury to find a defendant guilty of a lesser crime in lieu of the originally charged crime. For example, manslaughter instead of murder.

Overall it’s obviously stacked against the defendant in federal court. Adding in unlimited retrials basically guarantees a defendant will be found guilty eventually.

I think the most retrials I've seen (stemming from hung juries, not reversals) is the John Gotti Jr. case, where he got four mistrials. Prosecutors decided not to seek retrial after that.

I read https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/the-surreal-ca... and, well, this guy's not exactly a poster child for "the system is out to get you."

I think the "our system is rigged" argument is a bit more compelling when looking at, say, the mandatory minimum sentences for crack possession.

No shit other people have it worse. I'd put Speedy and Public Trial and Due Process (Civil Asset Forfeiture) problems as the top of the list, with Double Jeopardy erosion a ways down. Mandatory minimums sound like they belong on the list too, but I'm not familiar enough to know exactly where to place them -- probably high on the list. In any case, one bad thing on a list certainly does not invalidate another bad thing on the list. That's an even more dogshit idea than the loopholes themselves.

> this guy's not exactly a poster child

Standing up for rights means standing up for bastards. Always has, always will, because that's when rights get tested.

On a somewhat positive note, there are things like the Speedy Trial Act that mandate charges be dismissed if a trial is not brought quickly enough. But it’s often not very effective because they are allowed to delay the trial basically indefinitely if the judge finds it is in the “ends of justice” to do so. There also have been major cases thrown out over Brady (evidence disclosure) violations recently which is a step in the right direction. I think defendants now probably have more rights than they ever did but the problem is that 1) there are way more laws to break today than ever before 2) federal prosecutors are less interested in the public good and more in their political ambitions and careers instead 3) good legal representation has become incredibly expensive.

And even the things that are explicitly protected are subject to the interpretation of the Constitution, via the ouija board that the Supreme Court uses to contact the "founders".

What right of his do you think was violated?

Also, if he represented himself, is he really a "well off defendant who can afford non-court-appointed lawyer"?

Race is, of course, relevant, since case outcomes dramatically differ by race.

I remember reading about a guy who had 5 or 6 trials for murder. The prosecutor just kept trying.

Was it five or six hung juries?

Convicted four times, but with conviction overturned on appeal (including one time to the Supreme Court), plus two mistrials. The new DA declined to seek a seventh trial.

There has to be an error of law (e.g. the judge have a wrong jury instruction, or evidence was inappropriately allowed/excluded, or the trial was allowed to continue when a mistrial should have been declared) or other constitutional basis, like ineffective counsel.

In some cases, appeal courts will decide that there could be no basis for conviction once the flaw is corrected (in which case a conviction can be reversed), but oftentimes the appropriate outcome is to remand the case back to the lower court for retrial.