9 Mass. 494
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided March 15, 1813
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1813-03-15
<p>Upon a trial for robbery, the jury, after being long out, returned into Court, not having agreed on a verdict, and saying that it was not probable they ever could agree; a juror was withdrawn without the prisoner’s consent, and the jury being discharged, he was afterwards tried and convicted by another jury, and it was holden a good conviction.</p>
Cited in Bouvier (1839)’s definition of “Discharge Of A Jury” · Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Autopsy”
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1813-03-15
Cited by 21 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2020
17 state decisions — followed in 11 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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¶1The ancient strictness of the law upon this subject has very much abated in the English courts; nor would it be consistent with the genius of our government or laws to use compulsory means to effect an agreement among jurors. The practice of withdrawing a juror, where there existed no prospect of a verdict, has frequently been adopted at criminal trials in this Court, and the exception taken in this case cannot prevail.
¶2The defendant took nothing by his motion.