No split verdicts
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https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_e446e44e-35f3-11ea-8b1c-8705ca5b3db9.html
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that juries across the nation must be unanimous to convict or acquit a criminal defendant, outlawing the split verdicts that had persisted in Louisiana since openly racist lawmakers enshrined them in the state Constitution during the Jim Crow era.
In a 6-3 decision that crossed ideological lines, the high court ruled that the Sixth Amendment’s right to a jury trial implicitly requires a unanimous verdict, and that the previously acknowledged need for jury consensus in federal courtrooms applies equally to state courts through the 14th Amendment.
The decision will mean a new trial for Evangelisto Ramos of New Orleans, who was serving a life prison sentence after being convicted of murder in a 10-2 decision. It will immediately affect scores of other recent criminal convictions and hundreds of pending felony prosecutions in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states to adopt nonunanimous jury verdicts — in 1898 and 1934, respectively.
Louisianans voted in 2018 to do away with the practice, overwhelmingly passing an amendment to the state constitution requiring unanimous juries in future cases.
But the ruling, anticipated by many legal scholars, will still have a major impact here: It appears to hand new trials to as many as 100 Louisiana inmates who, like Ramos, were convicted by split juries and have not exhausted their appeals, according to defense advocates. It will mean all verdicts going forward must be unanimous; the 2019 amendment applied only to trials involving crimes that occurred after Jan. 1, 2019.
The decision will have no immediate impact on a much larger group of inmates that has run out of appeal options.
"We are heartened that the Court has held, once and for all, that the promise of the Sixth Amendment fully applies in Louisiana, rejecting any concept of second-class justice," said Ben Cohen, an attorney at the New Orleans-based Promise of Justice Initiative who brought the case on Ramos' behalf.
At the center of the high court debate were the implications of overturning a nearly 50-year-old decision that Louisiana and Oregon took as vindication of their peculiar system for dispensing justice in felony cases, and how such a reversal could color future court decisions on unrelated issues, such as abortion.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in No split verdicts:
https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_e446e44e-35f3-11ea-8b1c-8705ca5b3db9.html
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that juries across the nation must be unanimous to convict or acquit a criminal defendant, outlawing the split verdicts that had persisted in Louisiana since openly racist lawmakers enshrined them in the state Constitution during the Jim Crow era.
In a 6-3 decision that crossed ideological lines, the high court ruled that the Sixth Amendment’s right to a jury trial implicitly requires a unanimous verdict, and that the previously acknowledged need for jury consensus in federal courtrooms applies equally to state courts through the 14th Amendment.
The decision will mean a new trial for Evangelisto Ramos of New Orleans, who was serving a life prison sentence after being convicted of murder in a 10-2 decision. It will immediately affect scores of other recent criminal convictions and hundreds of pending felony prosecutions in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states to adopt nonunanimous jury verdicts — in 1898 and 1934, respectively.
Louisianans voted in 2018 to do away with the practice, overwhelmingly passing an amendment to the state constitution requiring unanimous juries in future cases.
But the ruling, anticipated by many legal scholars, will still have a major impact here: It appears to hand new trials to as many as 100 Louisiana inmates who, like Ramos, were convicted by split juries and have not exhausted their appeals, according to defense advocates. It will mean all verdicts going forward must be unanimous; the 2019 amendment applied only to trials involving crimes that occurred after Jan. 1, 2019.
The decision will have no immediate impact on a much larger group of inmates that has run out of appeal options.
"We are heartened that the Court has held, once and for all, that the promise of the Sixth Amendment fully applies in Louisiana, rejecting any concept of second-class justice," said Ben Cohen, an attorney at the New Orleans-based Promise of Justice Initiative who brought the case on Ramos' behalf.
At the center of the high court debate were the implications of overturning a nearly 50-year-old decision that Louisiana and Oregon took as vindication of their peculiar system for dispensing justice in felony cases, and how such a reversal could color future court decisions on unrelated issues, such as abortion.
Take the mustard off of that hotdog. Been a lot of white people and brown people convicted in the same way. Interesting line-up of judges in the vote.
I like opinions like this. When you get both sides of the aisle to agree, you're usually getting good law.
The decision:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
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SCOTUS: No do-overs.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that prisoners who were convicted by non-unanimous juries before the high court barred the practice a year ago don’t need to be retried.
The justices ruled 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines that prisoners whose cases had concluded before the justices’ 2020 ruling shouldn’t benefit from it. The decision affects prisoners who were convicted in Louisiana and Oregon as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the few places that had allowed criminal convictions based on divided jury votes.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the conservative majority that the court’s “well-settled retroactivity doctrine” led to the conclusion that the decision doesn’t apply retroactively. The decision “tracks the Court’s many longstanding precedents on retroactivity,” he wrote.
In a dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that as a result of the ruling, “For the first time in many decades ... those convicted under rules found not to produce fair and reliable verdicts will be left without recourse in federal courts.”
During arguments in the case in December, which were held by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic, the justices were told that ruling in favor of the prisoners could mean retrials for 1,000 to 1,600 people in Louisiana alone. States and the Trump administration had urged the court not to give more prisoners the benefit of the ruling, saying doing so would be “massively disruptive” in both Louisiana and Oregon and might mean “the release of violent offenders who cannot practically be retried.”
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Because of the timeframe, most of these folks are not in prison for cheating at hopscotch. It's going to be rape, murder, etc.
I do think that there should be a review of court cases and and any that are more widely split should either be retried or have the prisoner brought before the parole board.
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A review is certainly in order.
On the other hand, I can see where split decisions could nullify the effect of all sorts of prejudices as well as promote them. I'd imagine in some cases you get a juror who will not return a guilty verdict despite clear evidence, or one that will vote guilty on the flimsiest of evidence.
