Trial by jury

Extract

In French law, the 12 members of a jury are not required to return a unanimous verdict. It was decreed in 1831 that a vote of 8 or more would suffice. Four years later, it was proposed to reduce the requirement to 7 or more. There was a heated discussion in the Chamber of Deputies of this proposal which was strongly challenged by Arago, a mathematical physicist. Despite his ardent use of probability theory, the law was in fact changed.