The US Supreme Court rules that those convicted in the past on non-unanimous jury verdicts will not automatically get a retrial.
The decision, Edwards v. Vannoy, states that a prior ruling, Ramos v. Louisiana, deeming non-unanimous jury verdicts unconstitutional is not retroactive. Attorney Andre Belanger argued for retroactivity on behalf of his client Thedrick Edwards who was convicted in 2007 on a number of counts related to a Baton Rouge crime spree, all of them non-unanimous.
“It is unfair when the court recognizes that our prior system was patently unfair and racist in origin that an arbitrary date on the calendar should be the deciding factor,” said Belanger.
The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office argued against retroactivity in front of the court saying “At a time when crime rates are through the sky and attempts to erode law and order are incessant, it is assuring that the Supreme Court upheld the rule of law.”
About 1,500 Louisiana convictions would have to have been retried if the ruling went the other way, but Belanger said the Court did leave the door open for state and local action.
“New Orleans was able to do that for some cases in one particular section of court. They are doing a systemic case by case review of split verdicts,” said Belanger.
There’s also legislation that is currently in committee that would make the unconstitutionality of non-unanimous verdicts retroactive.
Attorney General Jeff Landry argued ordering retrials would threaten the convictions of many violent criminals. Belanger disagreed.
“There has been significant actual exoneration studies broken down to show that there is a very significant population that has been exonerated after the fact dealing with a split verdict,” said Belanger.
Before the US Supreme Court ruled that non-unanimous verdicts were unconstitutional and rooted in old racist policy the state passed an amendment that ended the use of non-unanimous verdicts, but did not apply it retroactively.
Comments