Most trials at Athens worked differently than ours. We have small jury panels, what the Romans would have called judges, who discuss the trial among themselves before agreeing together on a resolution. At Athens, and in some Roman criminal cases, verdict was reached by majority vote by the assembly, as in the case of legislative votes. Athenian trials were supposed to be tried by the citizen body as a whole, and thus their juries were essentially little versions of the Assembly, following the same voting procedures--there was no delay in reaching a verdict, since it was merely a matter of taking a majority vote and casting one's pebble