Evangelisto RAMOS walked out of a New Orleans Courthouse, escaping a life-sentence accompanied by a 10-to-2 jury verdict. This was in part due to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case bearing his name.
Ramos V. Louisiana declared nonunanimous juriesunconstitutional. The 6-3 majority of justices acknowledged the practice as an enduring remnant of racism that dates back to the “Jim Crow laws which enforced racial separation.
The 2020 ruling means that Ramos will have a new trial. He was acquitted by a jury in March, this time unanimously. Defense lawyers had highlighted weaknesses in the investigation which led to his prosecution.
“I knew that my case was significant because a number of people would be able to regain their freedom,” Ramos said in an email response to questions from The Associated Press about his time spent in prison and the pursuit of a retrial.
The prospects of freedom for hundreds who were convicted by 10-2 or even 11-1 jury verdicts, but whose appeals had been exhausted before the Ramos decision was made, remain hazy. According to the advocacy group Promise of Justice Initiative, there are over 1,500 of these people in Louisiana prisons.
The Oregon Supreme Court, which was the only state to allow nonunanimous convictions prior to the Ramos Case, granted new trials. The U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the Louisiana Supreme Court, rejected arguments that the ruling should be applied retroactively.
In recent years, Louisianans have also turned to the Legislature. The latest possible remedy has stalled and seems dead in the House after the representatives voted against it by 50 to 38 on Thursday. With only two weeks remaining in the legislative period, it is unlikely that supporters will be able to revive the bill.
Some prosecutors, who did not want to revisit cases from the past, and advocates for those it was intended to benefit criticised the proposal.
The legislation, instead of retroactively awarding new trials to inmates who were convicted of a crime that was later found to be unjustified, would create a commission of retired judges from the state’s appellate court or Supreme Court. They could decide if the verdict resulted in a “miscarriage” of justice and if parole is justified.
Supporters of the bill, introduced by Rep. Randal Gaines (a Democrat from LaPlace), portrayed it as a compromise. Prosecutors argued that mandatory new trials could strain the court system and cause emotional distress to crime victims and families. They also claimed it would burden prosecutors with old evidence, and in some cases witnesses who are dead or can’t be located.
Loren Lampert of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association said that the compromise was not able to gain the support of some state prosecutors. The association, which had an official neutral stance on the bill, is credited with this failure. Criminal justice advocates, meanwhile, were disappointed that the compromise measure did not provide a way to exonerate convicted criminals.
Hardell Ward, an attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative, said that it must be a true relief to be released from being deemed guilty. His client’s case was the basis for a ruling by a state court banning older convictions, which had been exhausted in appeals, from the nonunanimous verdict ban.
Ramos, who was arrested in 2014. He was charged with second-degree murder for the stabbing death a woman in a garbage can outside of her house. In 2016, all but two jurors convicted him. Defense attorneys at the retrial noted that DNA was found on the fingernails of two other people, not Ramos. Ramos’ apartment floor, where prosecutors claimed she was murdered, was not soiled with blood.
Sarah Chervinsky said that the verdict was a sign of how problematic nonunanimous jury panels were.
The nonunanimous juries policies are rooted in post Civil War policy. They were designed to convict Black defendants more easily, even if there was only one or two Black jury members.
Louisiana voters banned nonunanimous convictions in 2018. This was for crimes committed on or after January 1, 2019. The vote was a result of a Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in The Advocate that analyzed the law’s racist roots and the disparities in verdicts.
Ramos 2020 affected cases that were in progress, even crimes committed prior to 2019. The Ramos ruling was not retroactively applied by the high courts, and this slowed down progress.
Some prosecutors have reviewed cases that involved Jim Crow verdicts.
Jason Williams, who took over the New Orleans district attorney’s offices in 2021 with a reform agenda, established a civil right division. More than 100 out of an estimated 200 cases were reviewed by his office. Ten wrongfully convicted individuals had their cases dismissed and dozens sentences or charges were reduced.
Ramos’s verdicts are not a complete record of the number of cases that have been decided differently. Lampert, in an email, said that the Louisiana District Attorneys Association does not collect these statistics.
New trials don’t always result in new verdicts. A Jefferson Parish jury unanimously convicted an individual of second-degree homicide, whose 2018 nonunanimous conviction was overturned. Jefferson prosecutors achieved a similar outcome in a retrial held last August.
Chervinsky explained that a retrial with a requirement for a unanimous decision can give a case more attention, especially if there is room for doubt.
Chervinsky stated that “it is not a technicality or a small difference when the prosecutor must convince all 12 individuals to agree unanimously on a judgment.” This encourages a more robust debate and discussion. They must consider all the possible reasonable doubts in the case. I don’t think jurors will be able to ignore this if two people are allowed to speak in the room.
