In fact, the trial judge has let the jurors set their own schedule, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., including lunch, Monday through Thursday - though conflicts have so far kept them from deliberating for two Mondays in a row.

Experts say the short days and short weeks represent part of a trend that recognizes the valuable public service juries perform and results in fairer verdicts.

"We had reached a point in time where the court system was pretty cold to jurors," said Fred Thieman, the former U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh under President Bill Clinton, referring to the practice of making juries deliberate 12 or 14 hours a day. "And I think the new trend is to treat jurors like what they are: public citizens doing a public duty."

Wecht's jury must decide whether the 77-year-old doctor used his former Allegheny County Coroner's staff to benefit himself and his lucrative private practice. They're weighing 41 counts of fraud and theft outlined in 56 pages of legal instructions at the end of a seven-week trial.

The jury began deliberating March 18. On Thursday, their ninth day of deliberations, jurors declared an impasse, but U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab instructed them to return today for more deliberations. On Friday, the defense filed a motion asking that the judge stop jury deliberations and declare a mistrial.

The panel is down to 11 people; one man has been excused for medical reasons.

Thomas Brunell is an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas who has studied how juries deliberate. Letting a jury set its own schedule involves a trade-off, but Brunell generally favors it. "You want to give the jury what they want up to a point. If they say, 'Hey, we want steak and lobster every night and a '74 Barolo,' then you might say, 'Now wait a minute,' " Brunell said.

"But if they say we don't want to go 12 hours a day, we think we'd do better with six, I think that's reasonable," Brunell said.

Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor and friend of Wecht's, said that no matter how you let the jurors slice it, the time they spend deliberating will eventually cut into their personal lives.

"No one can take two weeks, three weeks, without feeling the pressure to get on with one's life," Ledewitz said. "That ultimate pressure - 'My daughter's graduation is next week' - is outside of whatever situation you have in the jury room."

Brunell said courts have to keep in mind the important decisions juries are making.

The traditional style of jury deliberations "is like shutting all the cardinals in the Vatican and giving them only bread and water and saying, 'Don't come out until we have a new pope,' " Brunell said.

"Picking a pope is a pretty critical thing and deciding [Wecht's] fate is a pretty critical thing, too," Brunell said.