Case Citator › Thompson v. Utah

Thompson v. Utah

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
170 U.S. 343
Decided
Confirmed treatments
4
Flagged citations read
52 of 52
Citing cases (total)
52
Treatment dates
1969–1990
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Thompson v. Utah was overruled in part. Williams v. Florida rejected its rule that the Sixth Amendment requires exactly twelve jurors, and Collins v. Youngblood expressly overruled its ex post facto rationale.
More on how this was screened

An Arizona appellate court also rejected Thompson's ex post facto result, while the Supreme Court of Oregon criticized its historical reasoning. All 52 flagged citations have been read. The 4 confirmed treatments are listed below.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

52 later cases cite Thompson v. Utah; 52 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Thompson v. Utah?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled in Part

  • The Supreme Court rejected Thompson's twelve-juror requirement and held that the Sixth Amendment permits a smaller criminal jury.

    Williams v. Florida · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    The leading case so construing the Sixth Amendment is Thompson v. Utah, 170 U. S. 343 (1898). ... In reaching its conclusion, the Court announced that the Sixth Amendment was applicable to the defendant’s trial when Utah was a Territory, and that the jury referred to in the Amendment was a jury “constituted, as it was at common law, of twelve persons, neither more nor less.” 170 U. S., at 349. ... Measured by this standard, the 12-man requirement cannot be regarded as an indispensable component of the Sixth Amendment.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Supreme Court expressly overruled Thompson to the extent its result rested on the Ex Post Facto Clause.

    Collins v. Youngblood · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    To the extent that Thompson v. Utah *52rested on the Ex Post Facto Clause and not the Sixth Amendment, we overrule it.4
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Declined to Follow

  • The Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Thompson's ex post facto result and upheld a later law reducing the jury from twelve members to eight.

    State v. McIntosh · Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One · filed

    Admittedly, Williams did not have before it the ex post facto aspects present in Thompson and therefore it could not explicitly overrule Thompson on this issue. However, in our opinion, the United States Supreme Court’s reasoning in Williams implicitly did so. ... We therefore hold under the authority of Williams v. Florida, supra, that the change effected by A.R.S. § 21-102 changing the number of jurors from 12 to 8 does not affect a substantial right of the appellant and therefore is not an ex post facto law.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Criticized

  • The Supreme Court of Oregon criticized the historical reasoning behind Thompson's twelve-person jury rule.

    State v. Gann · Supreme Court of Oregon · filed

    The contention that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a unanimous verdict of twelve jurors is unacceptable for two principal reasons: (1) its cornerstone, the decision that the Sixth Amendment requires a twelve-man unanimous verdict, was reached by a sterile historical approach to the Bill of Rights which is now — and in our opinion very correctly — usually ignored by the United States Supreme Court; and (2) the “right” in issue, a unanimous verdict rather than a verdict by ten of the twelve jurors, is not of sufficient consequence to be fitted with constitutional rigidity. In Thompson v. Utah, supra (170 US 343), the defendant was convicted of a felony by a twelve-man jury in the Utah territorial court.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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