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Supreme Court says criminal convictions require unanimous juries

• ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
  Court.
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    Email the mods using the footer Contact link and they’ll fix it.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      Why? It's funnier this way. I expect the opinion was ... brief.
• PhantomGremlin 7y ago
  The CNBC article is quite good, but I like to read SCOTUSblog for their analysis. They add a little more detail: https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/04/opinion-analysis-with-debate-over-adherence-to-precedent-justices-scrap-nonunanimous-jury-rule/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/04/opinion-analysis-with-deb...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• traderjane 7y ago
  Supreme Court opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
• deathanatos 7y ago
  The text of the Sixth Amendment, > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Left me wondering where the right to unanimous juries comes from, since it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the actual amendment, and the article doesn't really tell me. Even SCOTUS blog, unless I missed it, doesn't say. Thankfully, there's Wikipedia[1]: > Originally, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial indicated a right to "a trial by jury as understood and applied at common law, and includes all the essential elements as they were recognized in this country and England when the Constitution was adopted." Therefore, it was held that juries had to be composed of twelve persons and that verdicts had to be unanimous, as was customary in England. The next paragraph was a bit odd in light of my question: > When, under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court extended the right to a trial by jury to defendants in state courts, it re-examined some of the standards. It has been held that twelve came to be the number of jurors by "historical accident," and that a jury of six would be sufficient, but anything less would deprive the defendant of a right to trial by jury. Sure, but what prevents us from calling unanimity a historical accident as well? (Still, personally, I think having to have 12 — or maybe just 6 — people come to agreement on a conviction is for the better. I'd rather let a few guilty people go free than convict an innocent one.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Impartial_jury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
  • asperous 7y ago
    Historical precedent rather then accident I would say. There is a quote in the court's opinion that using historical precedent "promotes the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process". I agree with you, beyond a reasonable doubt should mean all jurors agree.
    • drapred7 7y ago
      At the risk of being a bit technical, (as law tends to be) I think reasonable doubt is called the "standard of evidence". Its the phrase "jury trial" that the court found to require unanimous verdicts.
      • pnw_hazor 7y ago
        Criminal jury trials have the unanimity requirement. Also, criminal convictions are held the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, though there may be collateral actions, or procedural determinations in a criminal trial that have a different standard of evidence. Otherwise, US States have a lot of flexibility in how they handle non-criminal cases.
    • cyphar 7y ago
      "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a standard of evidence, it doesn't have anything to do with whether the jury needs to be unanimous. They need to be unanimous regardless of the standard of evidence, even for "preponderance of the evidence" (which means that the jury finds it more likely than not -- that the evidence "tips the scale"). If the jury is not unanimous they need to deliberate more until they are unanimous (if they deadlock then a new jury is called and the whole case starts again).
      • jessaustin 7y ago
        The two concepts seem related, at least if we assume that jurors are reasonable. A single reasonable juror having a doubt indicates that the verdict is not beyond reasonable doubt. I agree that unanimity is not as obvious when the standard is "preponderance".
• mehrdadn 7y ago
  I'm confused at the article. What part of the 6th amendment ("In all criminal prosecutions...") distinguishes "non-serious" crimes from "serious crimes"? Also, does anyone know where hung juries fit into this? You would think that you're not-guilty until you're proven guilty, so what is this weird 3rd-state of "not guilty and also not not-guilty" based on in the 6th amendment?
  • vageli 7y ago
    > I'm confused at the article. What part of the 6th amendment ("In all criminal prosecutions...") distinguishes "non-serious" crimes from "serious crimes"? They may be referring to felonies, but yeah the wording seems strange to me as well.
    • mehrdadn 7y ago
      Do you know why even felonies would be distinguished here, even if that's what they meant? The amendment literally says "in all criminal prosecutions"... how does "all" turn into "some"?
      • AaronFriel 7y ago
        The Supreme Court tends to issue narrow opinions only on the case or controversy (Article III, Section 2) before it. The Court does not decide on matters not before it, so if the issue before it was about "serious crimes". The case was originally brought against Louisiana which had laws that distinguished between different kinds of crimes. Quoting the Fourth Circuit's decision in Ramos v. Louisiana: "Additionally, La. C.Cr.P. art. 782(A) provides in part that “[c]ases in which punishment is necessarily confinement at hard labor shall be tried by a jury composed of twelve jurors, ten of whom must concur to render a verdict.” If the Court said nothing of other ways of classifying crimes, then that is all that means. It doesn't mean that it's constitutional, it's just that the court doesn't rule on cases and controversies that are not before it.
      • beervirus 7y ago
        For sufficiently minor infractions (e.g. traffic tickets) the line between civil and criminal blurs a bit.
• pkaye 7y ago
  Looks like limited impact in most states. > The decision was widely expected and will have limited impact nationwide, as the only two states that have allowed split jury convictions in recent years are Louisiana and Oregon. Those two states could now face more than a thousand requests for retrials, according to documents they submitted to the justices.
• adelHBN 7y ago
  I thought this WAS already the law - whatever happened to "beyond a reasonable doubt?"
  • selimthegrim 7y ago
    Welcome to Louisiana.
    • icelancer 7y ago
      Louisiana had already rescinded this rule by the time the case got to the US Supreme Court, in fairness to them. Oregon, on the other hand...
      • selimthegrim 7y ago
        Louisiana is responsible for many other wonderful innovations like ensuring jury trials for non-petty misdemeanors. Don't count them out yet.
  • cyphar 7y ago
    Beyond reasonable doubt is one of several standards of evidence (along with "preponderance of the evidence" and "clear and convincing evidence"), but this is about whether the jury has to be unanimous in their decision that the standard has been met. In other words, what happens if 11 jurors find you guilty beyond reasonable doubt but 1 juror disagrees.
• ogre_codes 7y ago
  Being an Oregon transplant, I’m happy to hear this little legacy of Oregon’s racist past is buried.
• VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
  The autonomy of USA's "states" is getting erroded more and more everyday.
  • supernova87a 7y ago
    What do you mean?
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      It seems like the parent commenter is unhappy that the Supreme Court ruled to end a state practice, likely one that they supported, even though such “interference” is explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
      • supernova87a 7y ago
        I express my puzzlement, because I would love the parent to come back and explain. I would bet that the principle the parent embraces is not "states have a right to exercise autonomy" but rather "states have a right to exercise autonomy on those things I agree with". You know, like when people advocate for states' rights, except when a state decides to do something like narrow the right to handguns, or environmental regulations, or something like that. I thought that we agreed as a country that things guaranteed in the Constitution applied regardless of what state.
    • squiggleblaz 7y ago
      Defacto, it used to be the case that states had the ability to select their own rules regarding juries. Some states required unanimous verdicts and some did not. Now, it is likely the case that defacto states do not have that ability. Since America broadly follows rule of law, I think it is highly likely that this decision will be enforced. According to the supreme court, it was never legally the case that the states had that right, and the states will have to decide how to respond with respect to the incorrectly convicted people. But many people were put in prison on the basis of majority verdicts and this decision doesn't give them their time served back - it only changes the future. So the op is right to consider that something has changed and states are likely to be unable to do something that they used to do. It is surely not a hill I would want to die on, and I surely do not think a state should have a right to preserve white supremacy.[] It seems we all knew what the right to jury trial meant, and conservatives have been arguing for the court to consider the originalist meaning. [] I don't think a majority verdict necessarily needs to have any relationship with white supremacy, and I'm aware that other countries have found other paths. I also don't think procedurally valid court cases need to have unanimity. But if you sign up for a constitution that guarantees convicts a jury trial and you demand conservative interpretations what outcome do you really expect?
• gorgoiler 7y ago
  In all aspects of life unanimity is an excellent tool for making decisions. Abstention (in lieu of outright dissent) helps a lot too. Learning to negotiate in a non-adversarial way is an undervalued skill. Slight more contentious is that it seems not unreasonable to expect unanimity from the Supreme Court itself.
  • devit 7y ago
    Not sure about that: unanimity means that anyone can hold hostage the whole process and make arbitrary demands in exchange for their vote, so it really only works when everyone can be trusted to act in good faith or when it doesn't matter if the process is indefinitely blocked.
    • gorgoiler 7y ago
      That’s a good point. For me, situations with a bad faith actor are edge cases and there are ways to remove bad actors from the decision making process that are separate to the decision making process itself. Not really refuting your point, and definitely thinking about it in specific contexts. For example a consistent bad faith actor on a team at work can expect to eventually be removed from the team, and avoiding hiring these people (or bringing them into decision making processes) is one of the goals of a good hiring process. It’s usually framed as “culture fit”, to drop another euphemism.
      • HelloMcFly 7y ago
        Politically, situations with a bad faith actor are not edge cases. That has a way of cascading down into all different aspects of society.
    • mamon 7y ago
      Somewhat related example: requiring unanimity in parliament is what drove Poland to it's fall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto
    • pnw_hazor 7y ago
• lsiebert 7y ago
  To be pedantic, serious offenses now require unanimous juries. They didn't examine less serious offenses in this case.
• korethr 7y ago
  Having been on a jury, I thought requiring a unanimous decision for a conviction was how juries operated in the US in general. I'm surprised to learn that there were states that were an exception. I'm not surprised to learn that said exceptions have racist origins and use. There's been a lot of bullshit on the books put there for racist reasons. I'd thought said BS was largely gone from the books. Well, regardless how how much BS still remains or doesn't, I'll happily take one more bit of it being removed.
  • icelancer 7y ago
    >> I'd thought said BS was largely gone from the books. It basically was by the time this case was argued. But there was sufficient interest in how to rule on it (see Thomas' concurrence with the judgement only, and Kagan's dissent). The 6-3 split was pretty fractured as evidence for why they wanted to hear it. It is no surprise Gorsuch wrote the court's opinion; he has a particular disdain for things that impede civil liberties.
  • Natsu 7y ago
    Basically, there are two statues (Louisiana & Oregon) which do not require unanimous juries. It seems like this was done to prevent a few dissenters from preventing convictions. The split in the court is because some justices are worried about undoing something that has been used for more than a hundred years and upsetting a ton of cases.
    • C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Doesn't Louisiana derive some laws from the code napoleon
      • boomboomsubban 7y ago
        They do, but this practice started in their 1898 constitution that was openly drafted with a goal of establishing white supremacy.
    • pwned1 7y ago
• chippy 7y ago
  In England, unanimous juries were relaxed in 1967 to allow majority ones (i.e. 10/12). The reason for this was because there was a number of jury intimidation cases. A criminal conspiracy need to get to one juror to make the whole case fall apart. Was this consideration discussed by the supreme court in the USA? (edits - no results ctrl-f for "conspiracy", "intimidation", "mafia", "organized" in https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf )
  • jedimastert 7y ago
    I believe the legal term would be "juror tampering" but that's also not in the ruling text.
  • frostwhale 7y ago
    Yeah its a trade off, as the article mentions, against alienating a minority voting bloc in juries. In the US most relevantly black vs white jurors. Juries will generally be majority white meaning the opinion of the black jurors would be discounted often. Neither solution is ideal, and this topic interests me greatly, it seems very similar to the questions of fairness and bias in statistics / ML.
    • papermachete 7y ago
      Why is there a racial functional difference between jurors in your mind? Why should black people be judged by black people only?
      • frostwhale 7y ago
        There's a racial difference between jurors in my mind because there's a racial difference between jurors in reality lol. Pretending otherwise is foolish, lawyers literally pick their juries based on this obvious fact. "Why should black people be judged by black people only?" Is a racist strawman argument. I am saying black people should not be judged by white people exclusively, as can happy if every jury is majority white.
      • 7y ago
• onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Very, very disturbing it took so long for this to be ruled on. Honestly, I'm shocked.
• k__ 7y ago
  Juries seem like a bad idea for criminal conviction in general.
  • programmertote 7y ago
    I grew up in a country where there's no jury system in place. There, the judge(s) are all that matter in deciding the outcome of the case and as you can imagine, a lot of corruption happens (it is easier to bribe 1-3 judges than to a dozen jury for example). I am curious (a serious question) what better system you have in mind to replace juries.
    • vidarh 7y ago
      Norway uses a mixed system (it used to have juries for some cases; the very last jury decision after the law was changed was logically unsound - two questions, one of the four combinations was impossible; the juries returned that one) of panels of judges (from 1 to 7) depending on the type of case. For the most serious criminal cases the panel will have 2 professional legally trained judges and 5 "lay judges" - basically jurors of a sort, but unlike in a jury trial all of the judges (professionals and lay judges) deliberate together and vote together. In a 7 judge panel, at least 1 of the professional judges and at least 4 of the lay judges must vote guilty for a conviction. This feels to me like it gets most of the benefit of both a jury and of professional judges. It avoids a lot of the issue of whether or not the lay judges understand the jury instructions and the legal aspects they're asked to judge on, but also ensures the prosecutor does need to convince both the lay judges and the professional judges for a conviction.
      • pwned1 7y ago
        We also have the tradition of jury nullification in the US where jurors are free to acquit if they feel as though the law itself is unjust. Professional jurors would no doubt shy away from that because their employment depends on the government. In addition, in the US, jurors don't make decisions on the law, just the facts.
        • deleted 7y ago
• dkdk8283 7y ago
  Great! If there is any doubt I would rather see innocent people freed even if it means a few guilty people walk. Once the police like you for a crime they’ll likely find a way to make it stick. Even if it’s just circumstantial. Most people plea. Lawyers are highly educated performance artists. Prosecutors are pretty persuasive. Look at DA Larry Krasner in PA. He’s fighting corruption.
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  Can somebody explain how is this a good thing? Whenever nobody in a group has a different opinion on a serious subject that always seems extremely suspicious to me. Communist commissions used to vote this way traditionally.
  • aka1234 7y ago
    > "Whenever nobody in a group has a different opinion on a serious subject that always seems extremely suspicious to me." With a criminal conviction we're talking about exercising the state's monopoly on violence and coercing an individual to give up their liberty and freedom. There shouldn't be a differing opinion on guilt. If there is, the state hasn't proven the subject's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is reasonable doubt, the person should be found not guilty.
    • qwerty456127 7y ago
      Is it possible to prove somebody guilty with 100% confidence at all? I doubt anything beyond the realm of mathematical formulae can be proven with 100% confidence.
      • jaredmosley 7y ago
        No, that's why it is "beyond a reasonable doubt". A guilty conviction is not proving someone guilty, it is saying that your peers have no reason to doubt your guilt.
  • jaywalk 7y ago
    I hope you have the opportunity to serve on a jury for a meaningful case one day. I did, and it really opened my eyes. It was a young man being charged with a list of crimes, the most serious being negligent homicide. I went into it thinking "oh boy, this kid must be guilty" and by the end, I wished we had the ability to convict the prosecutor of negligence. The kid did nothing wrong. But the initial vote was 11 to 1 not guilty. The one guilty was a retired guy, and to this day I believe he was just relishing having something to do because he kept us there for an extra day trying to convince him that the kid wasn't guilty. He didn't even have a good reason for the guilty vote either, which was the worst part. Eventually he relented and the kid went free. The moral of my story is, having a different opinion isn't necessarily a good or useful thing on a jury.
• schaefer 7y ago
  if your take a random sample of 12 people in the USA, one of them is going to be way out there. When i served jury duty, our discussion of guilt meandered into the philosophy of fundamentally unknowable universe (much to my dismay). how could anyone really know what happened unless we observe it with our own eyes? I brought up the victim's seven stab wounds. Apparently evidence like that is subjective to some... IMO: unanimous is too high a bar.
• jl2718 7y ago
  What are the secondary effects of this? Less conviction? More crime? Longer trials? More expensive legal process? Less jury trials? More judge autonomy? I feel like my education in government had a strong bias in philosophy versus economics. That is, principles versus effects. In the practice of government, the bias flips.
  • ls612 7y ago
    Very little, as only two states still had non-unanimous juries and Louisiana already abolished the practice last year.
• sq_ 7y ago
  Very interested by the lineup on Gorsuch's opinion: > Gorsuch was joined in part by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh. I'm sure someone with more experience would see how it makes sense, but as someone who isn't well-versed in the workings of the Supreme Court, I'm surprised that set agreed on something.
  • icelancer 7y ago
    It's somewhat expected. You have three liberal judges and two that are very pro-civil liberties (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, plus Thomas who wasn't mentioned in that lineup). Kagan on the dissent side is the only interesting thing for me; I would have liked to hear her thoughts, but she just joined Alito. This is why the "conservative" vs. "liberal" wing of the court is a bit of a red herring in a lot of cases. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are both very "liberal" when it comes to individual liberties of people being infringed on by the government.
• parenthesis 7y ago
  The Supreme Court non-unanimously decides that criminal convictions require unanimous juries.
  • pnw_hazor 7y ago
    The jury has a different role than appellate courts. The jury is a fact finder. Among other things, appellate courts look at the application of those facts to the law. Appellate courts also can review if the facts determined by the jury (or a judge in non-jury cases) are unreasonable, whether fair procedures were followed -- including jury make-up or jury process.