Petition for Writ of Certiorari — Scott Joseph Trader, Petitioner v. Florida

No.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

SCOTT JOSEPH TRADER, PETITIONER,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA, RESPONDENT.

_____________

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO

THE FOURTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA

_____________

PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI

DANIEL EISINGER

Public Defender

Gary Lee Caldwell

Assistant Public Defender

Counsel of Record

Office of the Public Defender

Fifteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida

421Third Street

West Palm Beach, FL 33401

(561) 355–7600

gcaldwel@pd15.org

lmattocks@pd15.org

appeals@pd15.org

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether Petitioner was deprived of his right, under the Sixth

and Fourteenth Amendments, to a trial by a 12-person jury when

the defendant is charged with a serious felony?

In Kian v. Florida, No. 25-6623, the Court has granted

certiorari on the identical question. This case should at least be

held pending resolution of that case.

i

PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDING BELOW

In the court whose judgment is sought be reviewed, the parties

were:

Scott Joseph Trader

State of Florida

RELATED PROCEEDINGS

Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida:

State v. Trader, 562016CF003220A (February 20,

2024)

Fourth District Court of Appeal of Florida:

Trader v. State, 4D205–0330 (May 7, 2026)

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

QUESTION PRESENTED ................................................................. i

PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDING BELOW ....................................... ii

RELATED PROCEEDINGS .............................................................. ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...............................................................iv

OPINION BELOW ........................................................................... 1

JURISDICTION ............................................................................... 2

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY PROVISIONS ........................ 3

STATEMENT OF THE CASE ........................................................... 4

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION ..................................... 7

Williams v. Florida should be overruled and the Sixth

Amendment right to a jury of twelve should be restored. ............. 7

CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 19

INDEX TO APPENDICES

A. Decision of district court of appeal ........................................... 1a

B. Order denying rehearing and certification ................................ 2a

C. Motion for trial by twelve person jury ....................................... 3a

D. Hearing excerpt ....................................................................... 9a

E. Order denying trial by twelve person jury ............................... 13a

F. Initial brief excerpt ................................................................. 16a

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223, 231 (1978) ..................... 14, 15, 16

Brown v. State, 359 So. 3d 408 (Fla. 1st DCA 2023) ..................... 17

Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U.S. 130 (1979) ....................................... 12

Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau v. Cmty. Fin. Services Ass'n of Am., Ltd.,

601 U.S. 416 (2024)..................................................................... 8

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (2022) .......... 8

Florida Fertilizer & Mfg. Co. v. Boswell, 34 So. 241 (Fla. 1903) ...... 10

Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678 (2019) ................................. 8

Gibson v. State, 16 Fla. 291 (1877) ......................................... 10, 11

Guzman v. State, 350 So. 3d 72 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022),

rev. denied SC2022-1597, 2023 WL 3830251 (Fla. June 6, 2023),

cert. denied 144 S. Ct. 2595 (2024). .......................................... 17

Kain v. State, 393 So. 3d 786 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024) ......................... 18

Khorrami v. Arizona, 143 S. Ct. 22 (2022) ..................................... 14

Khorrami v. Arizona, 598 U.S. ____ (2022)..................................... 11

Mallet v. State, 280 So. 3d 1091 (Fla. 2019) .................................... 2

McDonald v. City of Chicago, Ill., 561 U.S. 742 (2010) ..................... 7

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) ...................................... 7

Pardo v. State, 596 So. 2d 665 (Fla. 1992) .................................... 18

Persaud v. State, 838 So. 2d 529 (Fla. 2003) .................................. 2

Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83, 126–27 (2020) ...................... 4, 11

Serrano-Delgado v. State, 392 So. 3d 251 (Fla. 2d DCA 2024) ....... 17

Simpson v. State, 368 So. 3d 513 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023) .................. 18

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard

Coll., 600 U.S. 181 (2023) ........................................................ 8, 9

iv

The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 530 So. 2d 286 (Fla. 1988) ..................... 2

Thompson v. State of Utah, 170 U.S. 343 (1898) ........................... 10

Trader v. State, 386 So. 3d 152 (Fla. 4th DCA 2024)....................... 4

United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024) .................................. 8

Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970) ................................. passim

Statutes

§ 913.10, Fla. Stat. ......................................................................... 3

§ 913.10, Fla. Stat. (2018) ............................................................ 18

Ch. 3010, § 6, Laws of Fla. (1877) ................................................ 10

Constitutional Provisions

Fla. Const. art. I, § 22 .............................................................. 3, 18

Fla. Const. art. VI, § 12 (amended 1875) ...................................... 10

U.S. Const. amend. VI .......................................................... 3, 7, 12

U.S. Const. amend. XIV .................................................................. 3

Other

ABA, Principles of Juries and Jury Trials ..................................... 15

Anwar et al., The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials, 127 Q.J.

Econ. 1017 (2012) ..................................................................... 16

Higginbotham et al., Better by the Dozen: Bringing Back the TwelvePerson Civil Jury, 104 Judicature 47 (2020) .............................. 15

Jerrell H. Shofner, Reconstruction and Renewal, 1865–1877, in The

History of Florida 273 (Michael Gannon, ed., first paperback

edition 2018) ............................................................................. 11

Matthew Bacon, A New Abridgment of the Laws of England (1768) 9

Matthew Hale, Pleas of the Crown (1836 ed.) .................................. 9

Saks & Marti, A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Jury Size, 21 Law &

Hum. Behav. 451 (1997) ............................................................ 16

v

Smith & Saks, The Case for Overturning Williams v. Florida and the

Six-Person Jury: History, Law, and Empirical Evidence, 60 Fla. L.

Rev. 441 (2008) ......................................................................... 16

William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England .......... 10

vi

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_____________

N O.

SCOTT JOSEPH TRADER, PETITIONER,

V.

STATE OF FLORIDA, RESPONDENT.

_____________

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO

THE FOURTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA

_____________

PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI

_____________

Scott Joseph Trader respectfully petitions for a writ of

certiorari to review the judgment of the Fourth District Court of

Appeal of Florida in this case.

OPINION BELOW

The decision of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal is

reported along with its denial of rehearing as Trader v. State, 435

So. 3d 1063 (Fla. 4th DCA 2026) (mem). Copies of the decision and

the order denying rehearing are in the appendix. 1a, 2a.

1

JURISDICTION

The petition seeks review of the decision of Florida’s Fourth

District Court of Appeal dated May 7, 2026, 1a, for which

Petitioner’s timely motion for rehearing, written opinion, and

certification was denied on June 22, 2026. 2a.

The Florida Supreme Court is “a court of limited jurisdiction,”

Mallet v. State, 280 So. 3d 1091, 1092 (Fla. 2019) (citation omitted),

It has no jurisdiction to review a written district court of appeal

decision unless expressly addresses “within the four corners of the

opinion itself” the issue as to which review is sought. The Florida

Star v. B.J.F., 530 So. 2d 286, 288 (Fla. 1988). This rule applies to

criminal cases. See Persaud v. State, 838 So. 2d 529, 532 (Fla.

2003) (quoting The Florida Star).

Hence, because the district court of appeal affirmed his

convictions without opinion, and with no discussion of his claims,

including his federal constitutional claims, Petitioner could not seek

state supreme court review of the district court’s decision. This

Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a).

2

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY PROVISIONS

The Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the

right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury …

.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

… . No State shall make or enforce any law which shall

abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the

United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of

life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor

deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal

protection of the laws.

Article I, section 22 of the Florida Constitution:

Trial by jury.—The right of trial by jury shall be secure to

all and remain inviolate. The qualifications and the

number of jurors, not fewer than six, shall be fixed by

law.

Section 913.10, Florida Statutes:

Number of jurors.—Twelve persons shall constitute a jury

to try all capital cases, and six persons shall constitute a

jury to try all other criminal cases.

3

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

Petitioner was charged by amended information in the

Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida six counts various counts of

sexual battery and molestation involving two girls under the age of

twelve. In 2023, after the prosecution abandoned one of the

charges, Petitioner was found guilty of the remaining five charges.

Those convictions were reversed on appeal due to misjoinder of the

charges related to the two different alleged victims, and the case

was remanded for a new trial. Trader v. State, 386 So. 3d 152, 153

(Fla. 4th DCA 2024).

The present case involves his retrial on three charges: one

count of sexual battery of a child under twelve by a person over 18,

and two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation by a person over

18.

Proceeding pro se, Petitioner filed a motion for a twelvemember jury under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. R 800–

04. 3a–7a. He wrote: “Based on Ramos[ v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83

(2020)], and because a trial by jury of six is unconstitutional, the

defendant asserts Williams [v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970)] was

wrongly decided,” 5a, and “because the Sixth and Fourteenth

4

Amendments to the United States Constitution requires such, the

defendant respectfully requests this Honorable Court to grant him a

twelve person jury trial.” 5a.

At a hearing on the motion, he made “a twofold argument,”

that he was entitled to a 12-member jury first because he was

charged with a capital offense, and second that “my right to a 12person jury extends beyond the capital offenses to all the offenses

based on the United States Supreme Court’s previous rulings over

the last 20 years.” 9a. He continued:

But specifically, Ramos v. Louisiana, they’ re giving the

United States Supreme Court is now giving more

attention to what the 12-person jury requirement meant

at the time of the framer’s — the Constitution was

framed. And so even though Ramos v. Louisiana wasn’t

squarely on — on point, it ruled about un-unanimous

juries. There are specific times in that case where the

court made mention of the fact that they are ruling now

in favor of the law at the time that the Constitution was

created.

And two years ago, there was a case that went before the

Supreme Court for writ of cert, and it got denied. But two

of the Supreme Court justices dissented, Kavanaugh and

Gorsuch. And Gorsuch wrote a four-page — an extensive

opinion on here about how Williams v. Florida was

wrongly decided. And I happen to agree with him. So it’s

my stance at the time that all serious offenses — felony

offenses in the State of Florida should require 12-person

juries.

5

10a.

The court said it would take the matter under advisement,

11a, and then denied the motion in a written order. 13a.

Petitioner was then convicted of all three crimes as charged by

a six-member jury. R 1016–17. The court entered judgment of guilt

and imposed consecutive life sentences on the charges.

Petitioner appealed to Florida’s Fourth District Court of

Appeal. As in the trial court, he argued that he was entitled to trial

by a twelve-member jury under the Sixth and Fourteenth

Amendments. 15a–18a.

As already noted, the court affirmed the convictions and

sentences without written opinion.

6

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

WILLIAMS v. FLORIDA SHOULD BE OVERRULED AND

THE SIXTH AMENDMENT RIGHT TO A JURY OF

TWELVE SHOULD BE RESTORED.

The Sixth Amendment provides: “In all criminal prosecutions,

the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an

impartial jury … .”

On its face, the Amendment does not define what is meant by

a jury. It does not prescribe the number of jurors. It does not say

their verdict must be unanimous, or even that a majority must

concur with the verdict. It does not say jurors must be laymen.

Given the Amendment’s spare wording and absolute silence

about such questions, we have no option but to look to “the most

likely public understanding of [this] particular provision at the time

it was adopted.” McDonald v. City of Chicago, Ill., 561 U.S. 742, 828

(2010) (Thomas, J., concurring in part) (interpreting Second

Amendment). Such “an approach grounded in history imposes

limits on the judiciary that are more meaningful than any based on

[an] abstract formula.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 698

(2015) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (internal citation and quotation

marks omitted). See also Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org.,

7

597 U.S. 215, 239 (2022) (opinion of Alito, J., for the Court)

(“Historical inquiries … are essential whenever we are asked to

recognize a new component of the ‘liberty’ protected by the Due

Process Clause because the term ‘liberty’ alone provides little

guidance.”); Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows

of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 321–27 (2023) (Sotomayor, J.,

dissenting) (surveying understanding of Fourteenth Amendment at

the time of adoption); Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau v. Cmty. Fin.

Services Ass'n of Am., Ltd., 601 U.S. 416, 442 (2024) (Kagan, J.,

concurring) (“Long settled and established practice may have great

weight in interpreting constitutional provisions about the operation

of government.”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted);

Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678, 741 (2019) (Gorsuch, J.,

dissenting) (surveying how term “same offence” in Double Jeopardy

Clause was understood at time of adoption); United States v.

Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 715 (2024) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“The

first and most important rule in constitutional interpretation is to

heed the text—that is, the actual words of the Constitution—and to

interpret that text according to its ordinary meaning as originally

understood.”); id. at 737 (Barrett, J., concurring) (stating that to

8

identify the scope of the Second Amendment “as it was originally

understood … courts must examine the historical tradition of

firearm regulation.”) (internal citations and quotation marks

omitted); Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of

Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 319–29, text and n.3 (2023) (Jackson,

J., dissenting) (interpreting Fourteenth Amendment in accordance

with understanding that, when adopted, it “was intended to undo

the effects of a world where laws systematically subordinated Black

people and created a racial caste system”).

As to the understanding of the jury trial right at the time of its

adoption, we are on safe ground.

Throughout the Founding Era, it was understood that a

criminal conviction required a verdict by a unanimous twelve-man

jury:

Yet the law of England hath afforded the best method of

trial, that is possible, of this and all other matters of fact,

namely by a jury of twelve men all concurring in the

same judgment, by the testimony of witnesses viva voce

in the presence of the judge and jury, and by the

inspection and direction of the judge.

1 Matthew Hale, Pleas of the Crown 33 (1836 ed.); 3 Matthew

Bacon, A New Abridgment of the Laws of England 234 (1768)

9

(stating petit jury must consist “of twelve, and can be neither more

nor less”); 3 Blackstone, ch. 23 (“Of the Trial by Jury”) (“it is the

most transcendent privilege which any subject can be enjoy or wish

for, that he cannot be affected in his property, his liberty or his

person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours

and equals”). See Thompson v. State of Utah, 170 U.S. 343, 350

(1898) (discussing historical background of Jury Trial Clause). The

only constitutional alteration is that, via the Equal Protection

Clause, eligibility has broadened, so that, for instance, women may

also serve as jurors.

So far so good.

But in 1875, as Reconstruction was drawing to an end, the

Jury Clause of Florida’s 1868 constitution was amended to provide

that the number of jurors “may be fixed by law.” Fla. Const. art. VI,

§ 12 (amended 1875). See Florida Fertilizer & Mfg. Co. v. Boswell, 34

So. 241, 241 (Fla. 1903). The well-settled requirement of a jury of

twelve continued in Florida until the Legislature enacted a law

specifying a jury of six in Chapter 3010, section 6, Laws of Florida

(1877). See Gibson v. State, 16 Fla. 291, 297–98 (1877); Florida

Fertilizer, 34 So. at 241.

10

This jury-of-six provision was enacted on February 17, 1877

— less than a month after the last federal troops were withdrawn

from Florida in January 1877. See Gibson, 16 Fla. 294 (1877), and

Jerrell H. Shofner, Reconstruction and Renewal, 1865–1877, in The

History of Florida 273 (Michael Gannon, ed., first paperback edition

2018) (“there were [no federal troops] in Florida after 23 January

1877”).

This law was consistent with a common effort in the former

Confederate states as they “restricted the size of juries and

abandoned the demand for a unanimous verdict as part of a

deliberate and systematic effort to suppress minority voices in

public affairs.” Khorrami v. Arizona, 598 U.S. ____ (2022) (Gorsuch,

J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). Cf. Ramos v. Louisiana, 590

U.S. 83, 126–27 (2020) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (non-unanimity

was enacted “as one pillar of a comprehensive and brutal program

of racist Jim Crow measures against African-Americans, especially

in voting and jury service.”). Florida’s jury of six is the child of the

same historical context.

This relic of the Jim Crow era was upheld in Williams v.

Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970), holding that trial by a jury of six does

11

not violate the Sixth Amendment.

Williams recognized that the Framers “may well” have had “the

usual expectation” in drafting the Sixth Amendment “that the jury

would consist of 12” members. Id., 399 U.S. at 98–99. But the

Court concluded that such “purely historical considerations” were

not dispositive. Id. at 99. Rather, it focused on the “function” that

the jury plays in the Constitution, concluding that the “essential

feature” of a jury is it leaves justice to the “commonsense judgment

of a group of laymen” and thus allows “guilt or innocence” to be

determined via “community participation and [with] shared

responsibility.” Id. at 100–01. It wrote that “currently available

evidence [and] theory” suggested that function could just as easily

be performed with six jurors as with twelve. Id. at 101–102 & n.48;

cf. Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U.S. 130, 137 (1979) (acknowledging

that Williams and its progeny “departed from the strictly historical

requirements of jury trial”).

Moreover, the functionalist approach of Williams is wrong on

its own terms.

Even if Williams were right to consider the function of a jury, it

was wrong to conclude that a six-member jury can serve that

12

function as well as a 12-member jury. Numerous studies have

established that a six-person jury is less representative, less

consistent, and more likely to rule against a criminal defendant

than a jury of 12.

The Williams Court conducted its functionalist analysis in part

by considering the “currently available evidence” about the impact

of jury size. 399 U.S. at 100- 101 & nn.48-49. These “few

experiments … usually in the civil area” led the Court to “find little

reason to think” that the goals and traditional function of the jury—

including, among others, “to provide a fair possibility for obtaining a

representative[] cross-section of the community”—“are in any

meaningful sense less likely to be achieved when the jury numbers

six, than when it numbers 12.” Id. at 100-101. The Court theorized

that “in practice the difference between the 12- man and the sixman jury in terms of the cross-section of the community

represented seems likely to be negligible.” Id. at 102. Even “[b]efore

the ink dried on the decision,” however, “scholars began criticizing

Williams for overreading the handful of studies it cited to support its

tepid assertion that 6-member panels would ‘probably’ operate as

well as 12-member juries.” Khorrami v. Arizona, 143 S. Ct. 22, 26

13

(2022).

Within less than a decade, Williams had generated a cottage

industry in “scholarly work on jury size.” Ballew v. Georgia, 435

U.S. 223 (1978). Ballew, which held that the Sixth Amendment

barred the use of a five-person jury, concluded that the postWilliams research showed that (1) “smaller juries are less likely to

foster effective group deliberation[s],” id. at 232; (2) smaller juries

may be less accurate and cause “increasing inconsistency” in

verdict results, id. at 234; (3) the chance for hung juries decreases

with smaller juries, disproportionately harming the defendant, id. at

236; and (4) decreasing jury sizes “foretell[] problems … for the

representation of minority groups in the community,” undermining

a jury’s likelihood of being “‘truly representative of the community,’”

id. at 236-237. Moreover, the Court “readily admit[ ted]” that it

“d[id] not pretend to discern a clear line between six members and

five,” effectively concluding that the studies it relied on also cast

doubt on the effectiveness of the six-member jury. id. at 239; see

also id. at 245-246 (Powell, J., concurring) (observing that “the line

between five- and six- member juries is difficult to justify”).

Although Ballew declined to overrule Williams outright, the bench,

14

bar, and scholars have all recognized that it called into question the

strength of Williams’s reasoning. As the American Bar Association

explained, Ballew “acknowledged the empirical findings pointing to

the superiority of twelve-member juries … when it concluded that

juries of fewer than six are unconstitutional.” ABA, Principles of

Juries and Jury Trials, Principle 3 cmt., at p.24.

Research after Ballew has further undermined Williams’s view

that a small jury can provide a representative cross-section of the

community. The current evidence indicates that “reducing jury size

inevitably has a drastic effect on the representation of minority

group members on the jury.” Diamond et al., Achieving Diversity on

the Jury: Jury Size and the Peremptory Challenge, 6 J. of Empirical

Legal Stud. 425, 426-427 (2009) (noting that the “change most

likely to promote diversity on the jury is a return to the jury of 12”);

see also Higginbotham et al., Better by the Dozen: Bringing Back

the Twelve-Person Civil Jury, 104 Judicature 47, 52 (2020) (“Larger

juries are also more inclusive and more representative of the

community. … In reality, cutting the size of the jury dramatically

increases the chance of excluding minorities.”). Because “the 12member jury produces significantly greater heterogeneity than does

15

the six-member jury,” Diamond, 6 J. of Empirical Legal Stud. at

425, 449, it increases “the opportunity for meaningful and

appropriate representation” and helps ensure that juries “represent

adequately a cross-section of the community,” Ballew, 435 U.S. at

237; see also Anwar et al., The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal

Trials, 127 Q.J. Econ. 1017, 1049 (2012) (“[I]ncreasing the number

of jurors on the seated jury would … increase black representation

in the jury pool and on seated juries, and make trial outcomes more

equal for white and black defendants.”).

Other important considerations also weigh in favor of the 12member jury. For instance, studies indicate that 12-member juries

deliberate longer, recall evidence better, and are less likely to rely

on irrelevant factors during deliberation. See Smith & Saks, The

Case for Overturning Williams v. Florida and the Six-Person Jury:

History, Law, and Empirical Evidence, 60 Fla. L. Rev. 441, 465

(2008); Saks & Marti, A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Jury Size, 21

Law & Hum. Behav. 451, 458–459 (1997). Minority views are more

likely to be considered in a larger jury, as “having a large minority

helps make the minority sub-group more influential,” and,

unsurprisingly, “the chance of minority members having allies is

16

greater on a twelve-person jury.” Smith & Saks, 60 Fla. L. Rev. at

466.

Petitioner respectfully submits that the ahistorical,

functionalist social science approach of Williams was erroneous as

it is contrary to the understanding of the Founding Era that

criminal defendants have the right to the unanimous verdict of a

jury of twelve.

Due to this erroneous ruling, Florida courts have uniformly

rejected arguments that Florida’s practice of trial by six-member

juries should be revisited, and the state supreme court has refused

to consider the matter. See Guzman v. State, 350 So. 3d 72 (Fla. 4th

DCA 2022) (citing Williams and holding defendant was not entitled

to twelve-member jury at trial for sexual battery on a child under

age of twelve), rev. denied SC2022–1597, 2023 WL 3830251 (Fla.

June 6, 2023), cert. denied 144 S. Ct. 2595 (2024); Brown v. State,

359 So. 3d 408, 410 n.1 (Fla. 1st DCA 2023) (rejecting as “nearly

frivolous” claim that defendant charged with armed robbery and

kidnapping was entitled to trial by jury of twelve); Serrano-Delgado

v. State, 392 So. 3d 251 (Fla. 2d DCA 2024) (citing Williams and

holding defendant was not entitled to jury of twelve on charge of

17

sexual battery on a child under age of twelve); Kain v. State, 393 So.

3d 786, 787 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024) (“Affirmed. See Williams v. Florida,

399 U.S. 78, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970) (holding

Florida’s use of six-member jury in non-capital cases does not

violate the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury).”); Simpson v.

State, 368 So. 3d 513, 514 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023) (noting that panel

was rejecting claim that defendant charged with attempted murder

was entitled to trial by a jury of twelve persons).

These decisions are binding on the trial courts of Florida. See

Pardo v. State, 596 So. 2d 665, 666 (Fla. 1992) (“in the absence of

interdistrict conflict, district court decisions bind all Florida trial

courts”). Further, the state constitution and state law specifically

authorize six-member juries in noncapital criminal cases. Fla.

Const., art. I, § 22 (“The qualifications and the number of jurors,

not fewer than six, shall be fixed by law.”; § 913.10, Fla. Stat.

(“Twelve persons shall constitute a jury to try all capital cases, and

six persons shall constitute a jury to try all other criminal cases.”).

So only this Court can right the dilution of the Sixth

Amendment wrought in Williams. Petitioner calls upon this Court to

grant this petition, recede from Williams, restore the ancient right to

18

a twelve-member jury, and reverse Petitioner’s conviction.

CONCLUSION

The petition for a writ of certiorari should be granted or it

should at least be held in abeyance pending the disposition of Kian

v. Florida, No. 25-6623.

Respectfully submitted,

DANIEL EISINGER

Public Defender

GARY LEE CALDWELL

Assistant Public Defender

Counsel of Record

Office of the Public Defender

Fifteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida

421Third Street

West Palm Beach, FL 33401

(561) 355–7600

gcaldwel@pd15.org

lmattocks@pd15.org

appeals@pd15.org

19