No. You cannot reliably predict a verdict from how long a jury has been out. The courthouse rule of thumb says a fast verdict means conviction and a slow one means the defense has a holdout, and the research does not support it. What deliberation length actually measures is disagreement and complexity, not direction.
Here is what the data shows, what the clock can and cannot tell you, and what Texas law says about how long a jury can be kept at it.
The Right to a Jury Trial in Criminal Cases
The Sixth Amendment guarantees you the right to a trial by an impartial jury in criminal cases. For most of the last century, two states, Louisiana and Oregon, let a jury convict on a 10-2 or 11-1 vote.
That is no longer the law. In Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83 (2020), the Supreme Court held 6-3 that the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous verdict to convict of a serious offense in state court, and overruled Apodaca v. Oregon. Louisiana had already amended its constitution to require unanimity for offenses committed on or after January 1, 2019. Ramos closed the gap, and Oregon was the last holdout.
A year later, in Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. 255 (2021), the Court held that Ramos does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. Oregon’s supreme court has since made it retroactive as a matter of state post-conviction law. Louisiana’s has not. That split is why hundreds of Louisiana prisoners are still serving sentences on verdicts that could not be returned today.
So must every criminal jury in America be unanimous? Nearly. Three real exceptions survive:
- Courts-martial. Article 52(a)(3) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice still permits conviction on the concurrence of three-fourths of the members. In United States v. Anderson, 83 M.J. 291 (C.A.A.F. 2023), the military’s highest court held that Ramos does not reach courts-martial, because the Sixth Amendment jury-trial right does not apply to the military justice system at all.
- Oregon acquittals. Ramos requires unanimity only to convict. Under Oregon Revised Statutes section 136.450, an Oregon jury may still return a verdict of not guilty on the concurrence of 10 of 12 jurors.
- Texas capital sentencing. Not a guilt verdict, but a jury finding that decides whether a person is executed. Under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 37.071 section 2(d)(2), the jury may not answer a special issue “yes” unless it agrees unanimously, and may not answer “no” unless 10 or more jurors agree.
Texas has required unanimity in every criminal case since long before Ramos. Article 36.29(a) says a felony verdict “must be concurred in by each juror,” and article 37.03 says the same for county court. Unanimity here means more than agreeing on the word “guilty.” In Ngo v. State, 175 S.W.3d 738 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005), the Court of Criminal Appeals held that “each and every juror” must agree “that the defendant committed the same, single, specific criminal act.”
How Long Are Jury Deliberations?
There is no time limit. Once the evidence closes and the judge reads the charge, meaning the written instructions on the law, the jury goes behind a closed door and stays there until it agrees, gives up, or the judge sends it home for the night. It can take five minutes, five hours, five days or five weeks.
That said, “there is no average” has become a lazy answer, and it is not quite true. The data is thinner than it should be, but it exists.
The most useful study of real juries, as opposed to mock juries, comes out of Multnomah County, Oregon, where researchers captured deliberation times across 1,159 criminal and civil trials. Analyzing that data in Factors Affecting the Length of Time a Jury Deliberates, 5 Review of Law and Economics 555 (2009), Brunell, Dave and Morgan found a mean deliberation of roughly two hours for a twelve-person jury and about an hour and twenty minutes for a six-person jury. Separately, the National Center for State Courts studied nine courts in California, Colorado and New Jersey and found a median criminal jury trial of about eleven hours of court time, with deliberations adding a median of roughly three and a half hours.
Both numbers carry real caveats. The Multnomah data is from the 1970s, from a single county, in a state that then allowed non-unanimous verdicts, which by itself shortens deliberations. The National Center study is from 1988 and did not include a single Texas court. Neither is a national average and no one should treat it as one.
But the direction is consistent, and it is worth knowing: the typical criminal jury deliberation is measured in hours, not days. Most verdicts land inside a single afternoon. If you have been waiting two days, you are already well outside the ordinary case. That tells you something about the difficulty of the case and almost nothing about which way it is going.
What the Research Says About Long Deliberations
The folk rule holds that a long deliberation favors the defense. It has an intuitive logic, because somebody in there must be holding out, and holdouts hold out for acquittal. The research does not support treating that as reliable.
The first vote, not the clock, is what predicts the verdict. The most replicated finding in jury research is that the verdict preferred by the majority of jurors on the first ballot becomes the jury’s final verdict more than 90 percent of the time. (Devine and colleagues, Jury Decision Making: 45 Years of Empirical Research on Deliberating Groups, 7 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 622 (2001).) In most rooms, deliberation is not where minds change. It is where a majority that already exists brings the rest along.
That reframes what the clock is measuring. Deliberation length is a lagging indicator of how divided the room was at the first vote, and of how much evidence there is to work through. The same meta-analysis found that deliberation length alone does not reliably predict conviction or acquittal, while the strength of the evidence produces a very large effect. Length tracks disagreement. It does not track direction.
And when researchers tested the folk rule head on, it broke the other way. The Multnomah study found that in criminal cases, guilty verdicts took less time than not-guilty verdicts, meaning acquittals took longer rather than shorter. The authors flagged the result as contrary to their own expectation. That is one study, in one county, fifty years ago, so no one should build a trial strategy on it. But it is the only large-sample test of the question using real juries, and it points the opposite direction from the hallway wisdom.
The honest summary: a long deliberation tells you the jury is divided or the case is complicated. It does not tell you who is winning.
Predicting Verdicts Based on Length of Jury Deliberations
If deliberation length predicted outcomes, the pattern would show up in the cases everyone watched. It does not. Here is the record.
Fast Deliberations That Produced Convictions
| Case | Deliberation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Billy Chemirmir, retrial (Dallas County, 2022) | 45 minutes | Guilty, capital murder |
| Lori Vallow Daybell (Arizona, 2025) | Under 1 hour | Guilty, conspiracy to commit murder |
| Hadi Matar, state trial (New York, 2025) | Under 2 hours | Guilty, attempted murder of Salman Rushdie |
| Ryan Routh (federal, Florida, 2025) | About 2 hours | Guilty on all five counts |
| Eddie Ray Routh (Erath County, 2015) | About 2.5 hours | Guilty, capital murder |
| Brian Walshe (Massachusetts, 2025) | About 6 hours | Guilty, first-degree murder |
| Donald Trump (New York, 2024) | About 9.5 hours over two days | Guilty on all 34 counts |
| Derek Chauvin (Minnesota, 2021) | About 10 hours | Guilty on all three counts |
Fast Deliberations That Produced Acquittals
| Case | Deliberation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| O.J. Simpson (California, 1995) | Less than 4 hours | Not guilty |
| Casey Anthony (Florida, 2011) | 10 hours, 40 minutes | Not guilty of murder |
| George Zimmerman (Florida, 2013) | More than 16 hours over two days | Not guilty |
Long Deliberations That Produced Convictions
| Case | Deliberation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Enrique Arochi (Collin County, 2016) | More than 17 hours over two days | Guilty, aggravated kidnapping |
| Jerry Sandusky (Pennsylvania, 2012) | More than 20 hours | Guilty on 45 of 48 counts |
| Terry Hornbuckle (Tarrant County, 2006) | 33.5 hours over six days | Guilty on three counts of sexual assault |
| Richard Allen, Delphi murders (Indiana, 2024) | Four days | Guilty on all four counts |
| Scott Peterson (California, 2004) | Seven days, with two restarts | Guilty of first- and second-degree murder |
The Peterson case earns its asterisk, because it shows why raw day counts mislead. Two jurors were removed mid-deliberation, one for outside research and one at his own request after being voted out as foreman, and each substitution restarted deliberations from zero. The panel that actually returned the verdict had been deliberating roughly seven hours, not seven days.
Long Deliberations That Produced Acquittals, Splits, or Hung Counts
| Case | Deliberation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Sean Combs (federal, New York, 2025) | About 13 hours over three days | Acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking, guilty on two Mann Act counts |
| Karen Read, retrial (Massachusetts, 2025) | About 20 hours over four days | Acquitted of murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene, guilty of OUI |
| Daniel Penny (New York, 2024) | More than 24 hours over five days | Deadlocked on manslaughter, then acquitted of criminally negligent homicide |
| Harvey Weinstein, retrial (New York, 2025) | Five to six days | Guilty on one count, acquitted on another, mistrial on the third |
| Paul Manafort (federal, Virginia, 2018) | Nearly four days | Guilty on 8 counts, mistrial on the other 10 |
| Robert Blake (California, 2005) | 35 hours over nine days | Acquitted of murder, hung 11-1 for acquittal on one solicitation count |
| John Wiley Price (federal, Dallas, 2017) | Eight days | Acquitted on 7 counts, hung on 4 tax counts that were later dismissed |
| Michael Madigan (federal, Illinois, 2025) | About 65 hours over two weeks | Guilty on 10 counts, acquitted on 7, hung on 6 |
Read those four tables next to each other and the pattern is that there is no pattern. A Dallas County jury took 45 minutes to return a capital murder conviction. An Oakland jury took 55 days. Both were doing the same job.
What the last table does show is more useful than a verdict prediction. Long deliberations very often produce split verdicts. Combs, Weinstein, Manafort, Price, Madigan, Blake and Penny were all multi-count cases, and in every one the extra time went into sorting counts rather than flipping a single yes-or-no answer. When a jury is out a long time on a multi-count indictment, the likeliest explanation is that it is convicting on some counts and acquitting or hanging on others. That is a genuinely predictive observation, and it is the one most hallway theories miss.
What Is the Longest Jury Deliberation in History?
No one keeps official statistics, so “the longest” really means “the longest anyone wrote down.” The record in American practice is the 2003 Oakland “Riders” case, where a jury deliberated 55 days after a nine-month trial. It is often described as an acquittal of three former officers. That is not quite right. The jury acquitted on eight counts and deadlocked on the remaining 27, producing a mistrial on those. A 2005 retrial also hung.
The notable modern entry is Michael Madigan’s roughly 65 hours over two weeks in 2025.
In Tarrant County, the longest deliberation in living memory came in 2006, when a jury spent 33.5 hours over six days before convicting Rev. Terry Hornbuckle of sexually assaulting three women.
How Long Do Texas Juries Deliberate?
Texas does not publish deliberation times. The Office of Court Administration tracks how cases are disposed, not how long juries sit. There is no Texas average, and anyone who quotes you one made it up.
What the Office of Court Administration does publish is worth more than an average, because it explains why deliberation length feels so mysterious. Almost nobody sees one.
In fiscal year 2024, Texas district courts disposed of 265,362 criminal cases. Exactly 2,156 of them ended in a jury verdict, which is about eight-tenths of one percent. In the county-level courts, 1,013 of 375,318 misdemeanor dispositions ended in a jury verdict, roughly a quarter of one percent. Two more figures from the same report are worth carrying around:
- Texas felony juries convicted 78 percent of the time in fiscal year 2024, on 1,685 convictions against 471 acquittals.
- Texas misdemeanor juries convicted 59 percent of the time, on 597 convictions against 416 acquittals. A misdemeanor defendant who goes to a jury is acquitted at roughly twice the rate of a felony defendant.
A few mechanics shape how a Texas deliberation runs:
- Jury size. A felony tried in district court is heard by twelve jurors. A misdemeanor is heard by six, in county court and also in district court under article 33.01(b).
- Eleven jurors, sometimes. If a juror dies or becomes disabled before the charge is read, article 36.29(a) lets the remaining jurors return a verdict. After the charge is read, an eleven-juror verdict requires the agreement, on the record, of the defendant, defense counsel and the State.
- Nobody else in the room. Article 36.22 is absolute: “No person shall be permitted to be with a jury while it is deliberating.”
Can a Texas Jury Deliberate Overnight or on a Weekend?
Yes to both. Nothing in Texas law confines deliberations to business hours or weekdays. The trial judge sets the schedule, and Texas juries have returned verdicts on Saturdays.
The provision that matters here is article 35.23, and it is widely misunderstood. Before the charge is read, whether jurors go home at night is up to the judge. After the charge is read, sequestration becomes mandatory on the motion of either party. The statute says the court “on the motion of either party shall” order that the jury not separate, “after which the jury shall be kept together, and not permitted to separate . . . until a verdict has been rendered or the jury finally discharged.” It expressly contemplates jurors being kept overnight.
There is a quiet safeguard attached. Anyone who lets the jury know which side asked for sequestration can be held in contempt. The legislature understood exactly how a jury would feel about the lawyer who took their evening away. For more on how this works in practice, see our page on jury sequestration in Texas.
In misdemeanor cases, separation stays discretionary with the judge at any point before verdict.
The Second Deliberation: Jury Sentencing in Texas
Here is the part of Texas practice that surprises people from other states, and it doubles the waiting.
Texas is a jury-sentencing state. Under article 37.07 section 2(b), you may elect to have the jury, rather than the judge, assess punishment. That election has to be made in writing before jury selection begins. Once a guilty verdict is in, you can change it only with the State’s consent. It is a decision made before a single witness has testified, which is one reason the choice between trial by judge or jury deserves more attention than it usually gets.
If you make the election, the same jury that convicted hears a second round of evidence, including prior record, reputation, character, and extraneous offenses proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Then it deliberates a second time on the number, and its punishment verdict must be unanimous.
Two North Texas cases show how differently that second deliberation can run. In Tarrant County in 2022, the jury in the Aaron Dean case deliberated roughly 13 hours over two days before convicting the former Fort Worth officer of manslaughter in the death of Atatiana Jefferson, rejecting the murder charge. It then deliberated about 13 hours more, again over two days, and assessed 11 years, 10 months and 12 days. In Dallas County in 2019, the jury in the Amber Guyger case deliberated about five hours over two days to convict of murder, then took roughly 90 minutes to assess 10 years, against a range that ran to life.
Same state, same bifurcated structure, very different second acts. And note that neither punishment deliberation tracked its own guilt deliberation. Dean’s jury took as long on the sentence as on the verdict. Guyger’s took a fraction.
The rule most defendants have never heard is this: if a jury convicts but then hangs on punishment, the conviction stands. Article 37.07 section 3(c) provides that a mistrial is declared “only in the punishment phase,” and the court impanels a new jury to assess punishment. A punishment deadlock does not buy a new trial. It buys a new sentencing jury.
Capital cases work differently. There, the jury does not pick a number. It answers special issues, and the vote thresholds are deliberately asymmetric. Under article 37.071 section 2(d)(2), the jury may not answer an issue “yes” without unanimity and may not answer “no” unless ten or more jurors agree. If the jury cannot answer at all, section 2(g) requires a sentence of life without parole, but jurors are never told that. A single holdout produces a life sentence, while the charge tells jurors it takes ten of them to say no.
The Allen Charge, Also Called the Dynamite Charge
Because verdicts must be unanimous, deliberations stall. When a jury sends out a note saying it is deadlocked, the judge can give a supplemental instruction urging jurors to keep trying. That is the Allen charge, named for Allen v. United States, 164 U.S. 492 (1896), and nicknamed the dynamite charge for its ability to blast a verdict loose.
A properly drafted charge asks jurors in the minority to re-examine their views with an open mind without surrendering an honest conviction, and usually tells them that a failure to agree means the case will likely be tried again to another jury hearing the same evidence.
In Texas, the question on appeal is whether the charge had a coercive effect on deliberation “in its context and under all circumstances.” Howard v. State, 941 S.W.2d 102 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996). A neutral instruction asking jurors to reconsider in light of one another’s views is not coercive on its face. Howard upheld one even though the judge already knew the split was 10-2.
What gets reversed is not the boilerplate. It is what the judge says out loud once the numbers are known. In Barnett v. State, 189 S.W.3d 272 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006), the trial judge questioned the two dissenting jurors individually, told them “we do have a problem with both of you,” and asked whether they would be able to change their vote. That was coercive and the conviction was reversed. The lesson for the defense is procedural as much as substantive. The error was preserved by a timely motion for mistrial, not merely an objection to the charge.
What If the Jury Still Cannot Reach a Verdict?
Sometimes the dynamite does not work. When it becomes clear no verdict is coming, the judge declares a mistrial and discharges the jury. That is a hung jury.
How long does a Texas judge have to wait first? Article 36.31 gives the answer, and it is not a number. The court may discharge a jury “where it has been kept together for such time as to render it altogether improbable that it can agree.”
Appellate review is for abuse of discretion and it is extraordinarily deferential. There is no minimum. What matters is the length of deliberation relative to the length and complexity of the trial, and reviewing courts view the facts in the light most favorable to the trial judge’s ruling. In practice, the reported Texas cases cluster low. Roughly three hours has been upheld where an 11-1 split had existed from the outset (Ex parte McMillian), about three hours after a thirty-minute punishment hearing (Page v. State), and about four hours after a two-day trial (Bledsoe v. State). Three hours after a three-week trial would be a very different question.
After a hung jury, you are neither convicted nor acquitted. A hung jury is the classic case of manifest necessity, so double jeopardy does not bar a retrial and the State may take the case to a new jury. It may also dismiss the charge or negotiate a plea. Nationally, roughly two-thirds of hung cases are resolved by plea or dismissal rather than retried.
How common is a hung jury? Rarer than the coverage suggests. Kalven and Zeisel’s landmark 1966 study put the rate around 5.5 percent. A National Center for State Courts study four decades later found about 6.2 percent across a broad survey, and 12.8 percent across four courts studied intensively, the higher figure catching hangs on individual counts that routine statistics miss. Texas does not publish a hung-jury rate at all. The Office of Court Administration counted 126 district court mistrials in fiscal year 2024, but that figure includes mistrials for every reason, so it is a ceiling rather than a rate.
What I Have Learned Waiting on Verdicts
I have tried more than 100 jury trials in Texas state and federal courts, and I have never once been able to read a verdict off the clock. Neither has anyone else at the counsel table, including the ones who say they can.
What I do pay attention to is the notes. A jury that asks for a readback of one witness’s testimony is telling you where the fight is. A jury that asks a question about a single element of a single count is telling you it has moved past the others. A jury that asks nothing for six hours is telling you nothing at all. The content of a note is worth more than the hour it arrives.
The other thing worth saying to anyone sitting through this is that the wait is not evidence. Clients read the clock as a verdict in progress, and it costs them sleep they cannot afford to lose. The jury is doing exactly what we asked it to do, which is take the case seriously. There is no version of that which happens quickly and cleanly in every case.
Waiting is the hardest part. It always has been.
Frequently Asked Questions About Jury Deliberations
What Is the Average Jury Deliberation Time?
There is no official national average, and Texas publishes none. The best available research on real juries found a mean of roughly two hours for twelve-person juries, and a National Center for State Courts study found a median of about three and a half hours in criminal cases. Most criminal jury deliberations are measured in hours, not days.
Is a Long Jury Deliberation Good or Bad for the Defendant?
Neither, reliably. A long deliberation indicates disagreement or complexity, not direction. The most replicated finding in jury research is that the majority position on the jury’s first ballot becomes the final verdict more than 90 percent of the time, which means the clock is mostly measuring how divided the room was before deliberation really started. On a multi-count indictment, a long deliberation most often signals a split verdict.
What Does a Quick Verdict Usually Mean?
That the jury was in substantial agreement from the first vote. It does not reliably mean conviction. Juries have acquitted O.J. Simpson in under four hours and convicted in 45 minutes in Dallas County. Speed reflects consensus, not which side the consensus favors.
How Long Can a Jury Deliberate in a Day?
As long as the judge allows. There is no statutory cap on daily deliberation in Texas, and juries can be kept past normal court hours or sequestered overnight under article 35.23.
Do Juries Deliberate on Weekends?
They can. Nothing in Texas law limits deliberation to weekdays, and Texas juries have returned verdicts on Saturdays. It is uncommon, but the trial court sets the schedule.
How Long Does a Jury Have to Reach a Verdict in Texas?
There is no deadline. Under article 36.31, the judge may discharge a deadlocked jury when it “has been kept together for such time as to render it altogether improbable that it can agree.” Texas appellate courts review that call for abuse of discretion and rarely disturb it. Reported cases have upheld discharge after as little as three hours where the trial itself was short.
What Happens if the Jury Cannot Agree?
The judge declares a mistrial. You are neither convicted nor acquitted, and because a hung jury is manifest necessity, double jeopardy does not bar a retrial. The State may retry the case, dismiss it, or offer a plea.
Does a Texas Jury Decide the Sentence Too?
Only if you elect it, in writing, before jury selection begins. If you do, the same jury hears punishment evidence and deliberates a second time, and its punishment verdict must be unanimous. If it deadlocks on punishment, the conviction stands and a new jury is impaneled to assess the sentence.
Facing a Jury Trial in Texas
Waiting on a verdict is the last few hours of a process that starts long before trial. The outcome is shaped in jury selection, in the charge conference, and in the decision about who assesses punishment, not in the deliberation room. If you have served on a jury and are still carrying it, our juror resource guide was written for you.
If you or someone you love is facing a criminal charge in Texas, our trial team is ready to talk it through. Reach us at 817-203-2220 or send us a message through our contact page for a free consultation.
