Members of the jury....

From a purely academic point of view, I found the most interesting feature of the Zimmerman trial in Florida was the fact that the jury was comprised of only six people.  We are so used to the idea of "twelve good men and true" that it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that there is nothing sacrosanct about the number twelve. Traditionally that is the number used for criminal trials in this country, but if a juror falls ill, they are not replaced and the trial continues with the remaining eleven jurors.  Indeed the number can go down to 9 before there is any question of abandoning proceedings.  And then a Coroner's jury can consist of anything between 7 and 11 jurors, and a County Court jury has 8. In the US a 1970 Supreme Court ruling held that there was nothing unconstitutional about a jury of less than twelve people. and Florida law states that a jury shall be twelve people for a capital trial, and six in all other cases.