Juries in the United States

rdf:langString Juries in the United States

rdf:langString A citizen’s right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution. It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system. Laws and regulations governing jury selection and conviction/acquittal requirements vary from state to state (and are not available in courts of American Samoa), but the fundamental right itself is mentioned five times in the Constitution: Once in the original text (Article III, Section 2) and four times in the Bill of Rights (in the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh Amendments). The American system utilizes three types of juries: Investigative grand juries, charged with determining whether enough evidence exists to warrant a criminal indictment; petit juries (also known as a trial jury), which listen to the evidence presented during the course of a criminal trial and are charged with determining the guilt or innocence of the accused party; and civil juries, which are charged with evaluating civil lawsuits. The most outstanding feature of the U.S. system is that convictions (but not necessarily acquittals) in serious criminal cases must be unanimous, which the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed to be a constitutional guarantee in Ramos v. Louisiana (2020).