In the midst of the gloom of the coronavirus pandemic, we can at least be glad for Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that abolished the rare and unorthodox practice of split, or nonunanimous, jury verdicts. The majority opinion was supported by an interesting mixture of the court’s conservatives and liberals, as Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor formed the majority in a 6-3 decision.
The case, Ramos v. Louisiana, dealt with whether the Sixth Amendment’s requirement of unanimous jury verdicts for convictions in federal courts extends to state convictions as well. In his delivery of the majority opinion, Gorsuch described the Sixth Amendment’s requirement of a unanimous jury verdict for convictions to be “unmistakable,” and Kavanaugh lambasted the prevailing opinion that upheld split verdict convictions as “egregiously wrong.”
Preceding this judgment, unanimous juries were only mandated for federal criminal trials and for state criminal trials composed of six jurors. Up until a successful ballot initiative campaign in 2018 overturned the policy in Louisiana, Louisiana and Oregon were the only states that allowed for felony convictions from nonunanimous jury verdicts. Thanks to a cross-party campaign led by conservative and progressive leaders, the voters of Louisiana soundly repudiated the state’s system of unanimous juries in 2018 by enacting Amendment 2 by a margin of 64.4% to 35.6%.
Living in the state with the second-most exonerations per capita, Louisiana voters had good reason to worry about the state’s nonunanimous jury verdicts. The city of New Orleans owns the unfortunate title of exoneration capital of the United States, with an exoneration rate almost 10 times the national average and almost 64% higher than the second-most exonerated city. As innocent people wrongfully lose their freedom and communities are left with actual criminals still on the streets, these wrongful convictions have a serious human cost.
In its amicus brief to the court, The Innocence Project, a national nonprofit organization devoted to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals, detailed 13 cases of Louisianans who were wrongfully convicted as a result of nonunanimous jury verdicts. Collectively, these 13 men faced 206 years of wrongful conviction. Glenn Davis, Larry Delmore, and Terrence Meyers wrongfully served 16 years of life sentences based on the testimony of a single eyewitness who admitted to smoking crack cocaine an hour before the crime. Gerald Burge was convicted according to the false testimony of the actual perpetrator. Innocent people in the state of Louisiana (and surely Oregon faces its own set of similar stories) lost decades behind bars thanks to a deeply flawed system that failed to protect their constitutional rights.
The ruling by the Supreme Court, however, will do more than simply protect the rights of the wrongfully convicted. When individuals lose their rights as a result of a wrongful conviction, communities pay a steep cost with actual perpetrators allowed to roam free.
Travis Hayes lost a decade of his life behind bars, while the actual perpetrator went on to carry out another murder. During the 17 years Willie Jackson wrongfully faced for a crime that the evidence suggested his brother committed, Jackson’s brother committed and was convicted on another rape charge. Despite fingerprints found at the crime scene failing to match his own, Archie Williams wrongfully spent 35 years in prison. Meanwhile, the serial rapist who actually committed the crime was able to walk free and continue his heinous acts.
As Benjamin Franklin said in one of his many letters, “It is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” The ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana provides communities the opportunity to live up to that statement and to right the wrongs established by nonunanimous jury convictions. While Amendment 2 did not apply retroactively in Louisiana, this ruling now provides at least 44 Louisiana inmates with the opportunity to have their freedom restored.
Just as both the conservatives and the liberals of the court joined together to end this unjust practice, so too should people of any political persuasion join together to celebrate this outcome.
Marcus Maldonado (@MarcusMaldonado) is the executive director of the Wave Center for Policy and Enterprise, a student-led think tank based at Tulane University in New Orleans.
