The Supreme Court Might Fix Something for Once

Florida’s use of six-person juries is heavily at odds with our legal traditions—and on a collision course with a hostile high court.

Monday’s batch of orders brought a rare bit of good news at the Supreme Court. The justices announced that they will hear Kian v. Florida next year, setting the stage for the court to strike down Florida’s Jim Crow–era law allowing six-member criminal juries.

The Sixth Amendment requires, among many other things, that criminal trials be conducted before an “impartial jury.” In nearly every state, this jury consists of 12 members of the community where the alleged crime was committed. But in a handful of jurisdictions, states use fewer jurors to more easily secure convictions.

Hamed Kian, the defendant in this case, is a chiropractor in Jupiter, Florida. State officials suspended Kian’s license in 2021 while they investigated allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Kian allegedly continued to treat patients in the years that followed, leading state prosecutors to bring five counts of practicing chiropractic medicine with a suspended license.

Under Florida law, trials for capital offenses are held before a 12-person jury. Defendants who face noncapital felony charges, however, are instead prosecuted before a six-person jury. One of those smaller juries convicted Kian on all five charges. He was sentenced to one year in prison and five years of probation.

On appeal, Kian sought to overturn his conviction by arguing that the Sixth Amendment required him to be tried before a 12-member jury. Forty-four states in the Union currently impose that requirement for all felony trials. Florida and five other states—Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, and Utah—allow at least some trials to be held before juries with fewer than 12 members. No state allows juries with five or fewer members.

In 2022, an Arizona man asked the Supreme Court to review his conviction of felony offenses by an eight-member jury on Sixth Amendment grounds. While the court declined........

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