The Supreme Court ruled that unanimous jury verdicts must be used to convict defendants of serious offenses.
In a 6-3 decision issued Monday, the high court determined that the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment protections include unanimous jury verdicts in serious criminal trials, which is to be incorporated into the states.
“Wherever we might look to determine what the term ‘trial by an impartial jury trial’ meant at the time of the Sixth Amendment’s adoption — whether it’s the common law, state practices in the founding era, or opinions and treatises written soon afterward — the answer is unmistakable,” wrote Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, in the majority opinion. “A jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict.”
The case, Ramos v. Louisiana, involves Louisiana resident Evangelisto Ramos, who was found guilty by a nonunanimous jury decision of second-degree murder in the state. Ramos was sentenced to life in prison without parole, though two jurors did not agree that the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The high court’s ruling makes it likely that Ramos will get a new trial.
Ramos argued that the Louisiana law, which has existed in the state’s constitution since 1898, not only violated his constitutional rights but was rooted in systemic racism. The argument asserted that white supermajorities in juries could overpower the voices of minorities. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, only two states permitted nonunanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases: Oregon and Louisiana. However, Louisiana changed its law for criminal cases effective Jan. 1, 2019, leaving Oregon as the only state where defendants could be found guilty with two jurors dissenting.
“On what ground would anyone have us leave Mr. Ramos in prison for the rest of his life? Not a single Member of this Court is prepared to say Louisiana secured his conviction constitutionally under the Sixth Amendment,” Gorsuch wrote in the opinion.
In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed with the rationale behind incorporating the Sixth Amendment’s protections to the states, asserting it is the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment that affords protections, not the due process clause.
“I have already rejected our due process incorporation cases as demonstrably erroneous, and I fundamentally disagree with applying that theory of incorporation simply because it reaches the same result in the case before us. Close enough is for horseshoes and hand grenades, not constitutional interpretation. The textual difference between protecting ‘citizens’ (in the Privileges or Immunities Clause) and ‘person[s]’ (in the Due Process Clause) will surely be relevant in another case,” Thomas wrote.
“And our judicial duty — not to mention the candor we owe to our fellow citizens — requires us to put an end to this Court’s due process prestidigitation, which no one is willing to defend on the merits,” he added.
In their dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan accused the majority opinion of succumbing to a “trend” of discrediting arguments via ad hominem attacks rather than disproving their logic. “Too much public discourse today is sullied by ad hominem rhetoric, that is, attempts to discredit an argument not by proving that it is unsound but by attacking the character or motives of the argument’s proponents. The majority regrettably succumbs to this trend,” Alito wrote.
“Lowering the bar for overruling our precedents, a badly fractured majority casts aside an important and long-established decision with little regard for the enormous reliance the decision has engendered. If the majority’s approach is not just a way to dispose of this one case, the decision marks an important turn,” Alito said.
