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In Louisiana, more than 1,000 incarcerated people convicted by a non-unanimous jury have filed to reopen their cases, according to the Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based legal nonprofit organization. The announcement comes a year after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that a Louisiana law allowing verdicts by non-unanimous juries violated the constitutional right to a fair trial. Oregon was the only other state prior to the Ramos v. Louisiana decision that allowed these types of verdicts where only 10 out of 12 members of the jury are needed to find a defendant guilty. The Jim Crow-era law has had a disproportionate impact on the Black community in Louisiana and has also served to silence the voices of Black jurors, criminal justice advocates say. The measure dates back to Louisiana’s 1898 Constitutional Convention, whose mission according to committee member Thomas Semmes, “was to establish the supremacy of the white race in this ....
More than 1,500 prisoners remain behind bars in Louisiana after being convicted by non-unanimous juries, a relic of the Jim Crow era that in April 2019 was deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision. Before that decision, which overturned a 1972 ruling, only Louisiana and Oregon allowed convictions by juries that weren’t in full agreement. Currently, the law change only applies to cases starting April 2019. But an ongoing Supreme Court case by one Louisiana prisoner could require the state to offer new trials to those previously convicted by split juries. The Supreme Court has until June to decide whether or not the law change must be applied retroactively. In preparation for the decision, lawyers such as Jamila Johnson, managing attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative, are working rapidly to identify hundreds of prisoners previously impacted by this law to petition for new trials. The legal team has identified more than 1,500 ind ....