ABSTRACT
Federal courts and most states do require unanimity in criminal cases; the US Supreme Court has ruled that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of trial by jury allows convictions by less than a unanimous vote in state courts. The unanimous verdict was a feature of the English common law and was widely accepted in North America at the time of the framing of the Constitution. Proponents of majority verdicts argue for them largely on grounds of efficiency. Without the requirement of unanimity, juries reach verdicts more quickly, saving time for both the jurors and the court. Research on juries supports the argument that unanimous-verdict requirements do increase both the time it takes the jury to reach a decision and the frequency of hung juries. Critics of non-unanimous verdicts argue that since hung juries are very rare to begin with, any savings from eliminating the unanimity requirement would be very small.
