[Red Badger]

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/31792/what-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-a-hung-jury

This column by Adam Freedman discusses the phrase:

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first printed reference to a hung jury in Edwin Bryant’s What I Saw in California (1848-49) in which he states: “The jury . . . were what is called ‘hung’; they could not agree . . .”
Bryant’s phrasing obviously suggests that the phrase was already in common use by the late 1840’s. ... The earliest use of the term in a law report appears in an 1821 case, Evans v. McKinsey. ... it appears that the term developed somewhere in the south during the early 19th Century.
Linguistically, the phrase seems to derive from the sense of “hung” to mean caught, suspended or delayed (“I got hung up at the office”).

[Defiant]

That makes more sense. Usage of hung as in “caught on”, which then became “delayed”. Not having to do with machines. By the way, for the earlier comment, a plough being tugged by a ox is not a machine.