The Supreme Court condemned laws protecting institutionalized racism in a Monday majority opinion.
In a 6-3 decision issued Monday, the high court decried historical racism present in laws that dictated guilty verdicts in criminal trials in two states.
The case, Ramos v. Louisiana, dealt with a Louisiana law dating back to 1898, which enabled guilty verdicts even if two jurors did not agree that the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Louisiana resident Evangelisto Ramos, the defendant, argued that the law not only violated his constitutional rights but was rooted in systemic racism, and the Supreme Court agreed.
“Why do Louisiana and Oregon allow nonunanimous convictions? Though it’s hard to say why these laws persist, their origins are clear,” began the bench decision, with the majority opinion authored by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. “Louisiana first endorsed nonunanimous verdicts for serious crimes at a constitutional convention in 1898. According to one committee chairman, the avowed purpose of that convention was to ‘establish the supremacy of the white race,’ and the resulting document included many of the trappings of the Jim Crow era: a poll tax, a combined literacy and property ownership test, and a grandfather clause that in practice exempted white residents from the most onerous of these requirements.”
The opinion goes on to describe how state delegates surreptitiously plotted to embed institutionalized racism within its law, hoping to avoid “unwanted national attention,” though the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in 1898 calling for an investigation into Louisiana’s exclusion of black Americans from juries.
“With a careful eye on racial demographics, the convention delegates sculpted a ‘facially race-neutral’ rule permitting 10-to-2 verdicts in order ‘to ensure that African American juror service would be meaningless,'” the opinion said.
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. The high court attributed part of Oregon’s law to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s.
“Adopted in the 1930s, Oregon’s rule permitting nonunanimous verdicts can be similarly traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute “the influence of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities on Oregon juries,” the decision said. “In fact, no one before us contests any of this; courts in both Louisiana and Oregon have frankly acknowledged that race was a motivating factor in the adoption of their States’ respective nonunanimity rules.”
The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees defendants with certain rights, including a public trial, an impartial jury, a lawyer, and the ability to know the charges and who made them. On Monday, the Supreme Court determined that the Sixth Amendment’s protections include unanimous jury verdicts in serious criminal trials, which is to be incorporated into the states.
Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Clarence Thomas ruled in favor of Ramos, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan dissented. The high court’s ruling makes it likely that Ramos will get a new trial.
