Posted on 04/20/2020 8:25:21 AM PDT by jazusamo
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that defendants in criminal trials can only be convicted by a unanimous jury, striking down a scheme that has been rejected by every state except one.
The court said in a divided opinion that the Constitution requires agreement among all members of a jury in order to impose a guilty verdict.
"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," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion. "A jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict."
Oregon is the only state left in which defendants can be convicted over the dissent of up to two jurors. Louisiana recently abandoned the practice after more than a century of use.
The ruling overturns the 2016 conviction of a Louisiana man named Evangelisto Ramos. A jury by a 10-2 margin found him guilty of killing a woman in New Orleans. Two years after Ramos's conviction, Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment getting rid of non-unanimous jury verdicts.
The new ruling likely means that Ramos could get a new trial.
Five justices joined Gorsuch in ruling the practice unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the decision.
Updated at 10:53 a.m.
A 10 - 2 verdict is not without a reasonable doubt.
Why a new trial. There was a trial, there was a verdict, the jury was 10-2, law was wrong, throw out sentence and conviction...
So much for the democrats agenda of re-writhing the Constitution
I know you are right. The sometimes ludicrous Miranda warnings are the result of defense attorneys sifting through loopholes and technicality hunts to get their clients off through appeal.
An impartial jury is almost impossible to seat these days, unless the defendant’s political leanings are totally hidden from the jury pool.
The idea is basically that free people judge each other outside the “criminal framework” (substantive laws) created by the government. The government provides a procedural framork, venue, structure and so on, but the decision to brand a person a criminal is for his peers, not for the government.
The government HATES this. It does not like “free people” in fact. It likes people to THINK they are free, even when they are not.
There was a recent unanimous guilty verdict in a Mueller case that was tossed by the judge. There was ZERO evidence for one of the elements of the crime. The judge was told this before charging the jury, but he made them work it out anyway. he also did not allow the defendant to tell the jury that there was no evidence for one of the elements of the crime.
They actually had a case they wanted to use in the term preceding Miranda but they dropped it because that defendant had been accused of child molesting. Optics.
The mistrial widget is one of several ways to get around the double jeopardy thingamabob.
Courts are usually the only protection citizens have against the government. And since courts ARE part of the government, they don’t always do their part. It’s good to see them standing up for the citizen.
"The doctrine of stare decisis gets rough treatment in today’s decision. 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.
"Nearly a half century ago in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404 (1972), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment permits non-unanimous verdicts in state criminal trials, and in all the years since then, no Justice has even hinted that Apodaca should be reconsidered. [...]
"I would not overrule Apodaca. Whatever one may think about the correctness of the decision, it has elicited enormous and entirely reasonable reliance. And before this Court decided to intervene, the decision appeared to have little practical importance going forward. Louisiana has now abolished non-unanimous verdicts, and Oregon seemed on the verge of doing the same until the Court intervened."
Good.
FewsOrange wrote:
“Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the decision.”
Interesting split, conservatives and liberals on both sides of the decision.
I was thinking that as well.
So - FOR split decision criminal trials ending in a guilty verdict - Roberts, Alitio, and Kagan.
So - AGAINST split decision criminal trails ending in a guilty verdict - Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayer, Gorsuch & Kavanaugh.
Wow - that’s some pretty wide ideological divide.
“They actually had a case they wanted to use in the term preceding Miranda but they dropped it because that defendant had been accused of child molesting. Optics.”
Ernesto Miranda was no saint, either. He was charged with rape, kidnapping, and robbery. Miranda was eventually retried and convicted without the prosecution using the “tainted” confession.
DemSoc states have no problem with giving criminals another chance to offend.
Washington DC is a cesspool of warped thinking and perverse incentives.
Wonder if unanimous jury decisions were required when the Constitution was written.
Read the article - the USSC majority says they were (and as far as I can tell the minority dissent doesn’t disagree).
So everyone who goes on trial is a criminal?
So, you've never been the man in a divorce?
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