Over the dissents of two conservative justices, the Supreme Court refused on Nov. 7 to take up the case of a man who claimed it was unconstitutional for Arizona to convict him using a jury comprising just eight persons instead of the usual 12.
The ruling means that a handful of states may continue to use six- or eight-person juries in felony trials. Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Utah permit the practice, according to an NBC summary.
The ruling came after the high court held 6-3 in Ramos v. Louisiana in April 2020 that convicting an accused person of a serious offense with a less-than-unanimous jury verdict, as Louisiana and Oregon had allowed, runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a right to a jury trial, as The Epoch Times reported….