Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts Draw Review by U.S. Supreme Court

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Constitution requires jurors to be unanimous before criminal defendants can be convicted of a serious crime.

The justices said Monday they will hear an appeal from Evangelisto Ramos, a Louisiana man convicted of second-degree murder in 2016 on a 10-2 jury vote and sentenced to life in prison.

Louisiana and Oregon are the only two states that let some defendants be convicted even if one or two jurors disagree. In November Louisianans voted to start requiring unanimity, but only for crimes committed in 2019 or later. Louisiana already requires a 12-0 verdict in death penalty cases.

Ramos’s appeal asks the Supreme Court to reconsider two 1972 rulings that said the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment doesn’t require states to have unanimous verdicts. The Supreme Court has long said that unanimity is required in federal courthouses.

The issue is similar to one that produced a unanimous ruling last month, when the Supreme Court said the Eighth Amendment ban on excessive fines applies to states and local governments.

Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Sixth Amendment was originally aimed only at the federal government. Starting in the 1960s, the court began “incorporating” many of those rights into the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, which binds the states.

The case is Ramos v. Louisiana, 18-5924.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Elizabeth Wasserman

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