The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up cases out of Florida from felons challenging the state’s use of a six-person jury instead of a 12-member jury, used by most states. 

Natoya Cunningham was convicted of aggravated battery and retaliating against an informant. She stabbed the snitch in the arm after her nephew was arrested for allegedly selling crack cocaine to the informant.

A Florida appeals court denied her appeal over being convicted by a six-person jury instead of the 12 version.

She argued that the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees a unanimous verdict by a 12-person jury and that the Supreme Court should revisit its 1970 precedent in Williams v. Florida, which upheld a six-person jury as not running afoul of the Constitution.

“Williams’ ruling that the Sixth Amendment (as incorporated to the States by the Fourteenth) permits a six-person jury cannot stand,” Cunningham’s lawyer argued in her filing. “Studies indicate that 12-member juries deliberate longer, recall evidence better and rely less on irrelevant factors during deliberation.”  

Jose Guzman, convicted of sexually molesting his granddaughter when she was in Florida, also challenged the state’s six-member jury practice.

The high court declined to take up the issue. It would have taken four justices to vote in favor of hearing the cases.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch authored a dissent from the denial, saying Williams should be overruled, reasoning it “substituted bad social science for careful attention to the Constitution’s original meaning.”

“In the years since that decision, our cases have insisted, repeatedly, that the right to trial by jury should mean no less today, and afford no fewer protections for individual liberty, than it did at the nation’s founding,” he wrote. “Yet when called upon today to address our own role in eroding that right, we decline to do so.”

Florida, meanwhile, argued for the court to reject the cases because Williams was “correctly decided” and “overruling it also would imperil thousands of criminal convictions in Florida and five other states that for more than 50 years have relied on its rule.”

Using a six-member jury has been in practice since 1877 in the state. 

Arizona, Indiana, Connecticut, Utah and Massachusetts also use six-member juries.

In Florida, a defendant can be tried by a six-person jury if it’s not a capital punishment case. More than 5,000 criminal convictions are on appeal in the state. 

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.