MATTHEWS
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA
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A six-person jury in a non-capital criminal case does not violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.
[1] A six-person jury in a non-capital criminal case does not violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, as established by Williams v. …
Previewing 1 of 1 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“We hold that the 12-man panel is not a necessary ingredient of 'trial by jury,' and that respondent's refusal to impanel more than the six members provided for by Florida law did not violate petitioner's Sixth Amendment rights as applied to the States through the Fourteenth.”
The court cited Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 86 (1970) as binding precedent establishing that six-person juries do not violate the Sixth Amendment.
Diana Louise Matthews was convicted by a six-person jury of attempted murder in the first degree with a firearm and sentenced to thirty years' impriso…
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DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA
SECOND DISTRICT
DIANA LOUISE MATTHEWS, Appellant,
V.
STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.
No. 2D2025-0285
October 28, 2026
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Pasco County; Kemba Johnson Lewis, Judge.
Blair Allen, Public Defender, and Jean-Jacques A. Darius, Special Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.
James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Lara E. Breslow, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
PER CURIAM.
Following a jury trial, Diana Louise Matthews was convicted of attempted murder in the first degree with a firearm as charged and sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment with a twenty-five-year minimum mandatory. We affirm her judgment and sentence without discussion.
As to Ms. Matthews' unpreserved argument¹ that her trial and conviction by a six-person jury constituted harmful fundamental error because she was constitutionally entitled under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to a twelve-person jury, we find this argument unavailing. See art. I, § 22, Fla. Const. ("[T]he number of jurors, not fewer than six, shall be fixed by law."); § 913.10, Fla. Stat. (2019) ("Twelve persons shall constitute a jury to try all capital cases, and six persons shall constitute a jury to try all other criminal cases."); Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.270 ("Twelve persons shall constitute a jury to try all capital cases, and 6 persons shall constitute a jury to try all other criminal cases."); Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 86 (1970) ("We hold that the 12-man panel is not a necessary ingredient of 'trial by jury,' and that respondent's refusal to impanel more than the six members provided for by Florida law did not violate petitioner's Sixth Amendment rights as applied to the States through the Fourteenth."). Although the United States Supreme Court has granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in Kian v. Florida, 146 S. Ct. 2732 (2026), and may overrule Williams, Williams remains binding precedent and it mandates the rejection of Ms. Matthews' claim. See Serrano-Delgado v. State, 392 So. 3d 251, 253 (Fla. 2d DCA 2024).
Affirmed.
MORRIS, ROTHSTEIN-YOUAKIM, and GUARD, JJ., Concur.
Opinion subject to revision prior to official publication.
1 Ms. Matthews acknowledges that this issue was not raised in the trial court. The issue was also not raised in her initial brief or her reply brief but was instead raised for the first time in a supplemental initial brief, which this court gave her leave to file.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (U.S. 1970)
- Serrano-Delgado v. State, 392 So. 3d 251 (Fla. 2d DCA 2024)