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Louisiana takes aim at Jim Crow-era jury law
It's too bad if true justice is sometimes an inconvenience Senator White. Jim Crow era laws like this need to be repealed with all haste.
April 14, 2018
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana is one of only two states in the country allowing a non-unanimous jury to convict a defendant of a felony, and a Louisiana lawmaker says it is time for the Jim Crow-era practice to end. Sen. J.P. Morrell says the unusual rule is a remnant of the Jim Crow era, stemming from a constitutional convention in 1898 and longstanding efforts to maintain white supremacy after the Civil War. And he wants a change. "This is something that is wholly unnecessary that was born of this fusion of racism and disenfranchisement," he said. "It's a self-defeating, illogical position to have two jurors say 'we don't think he did it,' then prosecutors to say we met our reasonable doubt standard." The New Orleans Democrat has proposed a constitutional amendment to require all 12 jurors in felony cases to agree on a verdict. The measure is gaining steam in the state Capitol. "This is an advantage for the prosecution, no question about it. It's unjust and unfair without any question, and it flies in the face of American legal tradition," said Ed Tarpley, who authored a resolution approved by the state bar association that opposes split jury decisions in criminal cases.
Serious felony trials in Louisiana, including some murder cases, can be resolved when 10 out of 12 jurors agree on a person's guilt. Even Oregon, the only other state to allow split verdicts in felony cases, requires a unanimous verdict in murder cases. Morrell says the non-unanimous jury policy was instituted in order to minimize the voice of African-American jurors. Angela Allen-Bell of the Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge says the current system results in "fast-tracking" people into prison. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the county. It is difficult to gauge how many people have been imprisoned in Louisiana on split decisions, as not all prosecutors in the state maintain information on how juries vote. Sen. Mack "Bodi" White, a Republican who voted against the bill in committee and in the Senate, said that requiring unanimous juries may lead to more hung juries and costly retrials. Morrell's measure passed the Senate by a single vote over the two-thirds margin needed to advance constitutional amendments through the Legislature. It now moves to the House of Representatives, the more conservative of the two chambers, for what Morrell expects to be a challenge. If it passes the House, it will go to a public vote in the fall.
It's too bad if true justice is sometimes an inconvenience Senator White. Jim Crow era laws like this need to be repealed with all haste.