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As the two-week trial in a condemnation case was winding down, a juror asked a question. This being Arizona, which 11 years ago embraced much of the jury reform now picking up speed as it moves across the country, Judge Pendleton Gaines accepted it in written form through the bailiff and read it to the lawyers: "How much repetition do we have to listen to during closing argument?" … The overwhelming weight of research indicates that smaller juries tend to be less representative of the community, says Stephen Landsman, a professor at DePaul University College of Law and reporter for the project that developed the ABA's principles. Such juries also are more likely to return verdicts at variance with testimony, evidence and the law, he adds. "An assessment of empirical data rather than anecdotes is that if we don't move back toward 12-person, unanimous juries we are undercutting the real benefit of jury trials," Landsman says. … Justice Harry A. Blackmun seemed to reverse the court's reasoning in the earlier jury-size cases when he wrote for the majority: "Recent empirical data suggest that progressively smaller juries are less likely to foster effective group deliberation. At some point, this decline leads to inaccurate fact-finding and incorrect application of the common sense of the community to the facts." Blackmun did not, however, call for a reversal of Williams. "I'm guessing that he did that strategically because he wouldn't be able to get a majority view," says Arizona State University law professor Michael Saks. "The court had been doing bad law and bad social science in the first two cases."
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