Supreme Court rules non-unanimous jury verdicts unconstitutional
Source: The Hill
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that defendants in criminal trials can only be convicted by a unanimous jury, striking down a scheme that has been rejected by every state except one.
The court said in a divided opinion that the Constitution requires agreement among all members of a jury in order to impose a guilty verdict.
"Wherever we might look to determine what the term 'trial by an impartial jury trial' meant at the time of the Sixth Amendment’s adoption—whether it’s the common law, state practices in the founding era, or opinions and treatises written soon afterward—the answer is unmistakable," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion. "A jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict."
Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/493653-supreme-court-rules-non-unanimous-jury-verdicts-unconstitutional
6-3 Ruling. Kagen, Roberts and Alito dissenting.
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underpants
(196,491 posts)I think
cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)
unblock
(56,198 posts)cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)
Major Nikon
(36,925 posts)cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)after trying to make sense of it.
Major Nikon
(36,925 posts)If I didn't know any better, I'd say Kagen's joining the dissent along with Alito and Roberts to be strategic rather than tactical.
If at a later time either one of them try to overturn Roe v Wade, she can throw this dissent in their face.
MissB
(16,344 posts)Court is pretty much shut down anyway but that means some changes to our court system once things open up.
cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)which cases to spend the money to try and get another conviction.
PSPS
(15,320 posts)
Massacure
(7,593 posts)Louisiana voters in 2018 passed a constitutional amendment that required a unanimous verdict for felony convictions on crimes committed on or after January 1, 2019. The amendment was not written to affect cases retroactively.
unblock
(56,198 posts)Still, surprised that this court went thus way.
Not surprised by the 3 dissents.
IronLionZion
(51,267 posts)Our liberals supported it other than Kagan.
Steelrolled
(2,022 posts)are not split along democrat/republican-appointee lines, particularly split decisions. It is like they are actually ruling on the merits of the case.
HuskyOffset
(926 posts)Steelrolled
(2,022 posts)I tend to just call the justices democrats or republicans because that is the reality, even though I think they are (in theory ha ha) not affiliated with a party.
bucolic_frolic
(55,129 posts)You mean the strict constructionists don't agree on the origins of Sixth Amendment practices when it was written?
That is a revelation indeed. Best to tuck that away for use here and there.
Scalded Nun
(1,691 posts)The GOP has been successfully playing the long game for over 40 years now. I see this announcement and I think 'Good deal. Majority rule in the legal system will never work out well for minorities".
But then I read Kavanaugh's comments, who wrote separately to explain why the prior case, called Apodaca, should be overruled. He said that while the notion of "stare decisis" -- a legal term that means to "stand by that which has been decided" is important court doctrine, there are times when the court should "overrule erroneous precedents."
The short vision is that a wrong is being righted.
My long view is that this lays more groundwork for overturning established precedent the GOP wants overturned (e.g. Roe v. Wade).
Like I said, this may just be me.
AllaN01Bear
(29,486 posts)
not fooled
(6,678 posts)and while Roe v. Wade gets the most coverage, the real targets are Federal regulatory power and its extent. And not in a good way that will benefit human beings.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(130,523 posts)It's a very lengthy discussion of the effect of stare decisis, that is, when courts should rely on precedent established in previous decisions. The court overruled Apodaca v. Oregon, a 1972 case holding that state laws allowing criminal convictions by a less than unanimous jury were constitutional. The majority concluded that Apodaca was decided on shaky constitutional ground in the first place and did not deserve precedential effect. The breakdown of majority vs. dissent was particularly interesting.
Gorsuch: "Not even Louisiana tries to suggest that Apodaca supplies a governing precedent. Remember, Justice Powell agreed that the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous verdict to convict, so he would have no objection to that aspect of our holding today. Justice Powell reached a different result only by relying on a dual-track theory of incorporation that a majority of the Court had already rejected (and continues to reject). And to accept that reasoning as precedential, we would have to embrace a new and dubious proposition: that a single Justice writing only for himself has the authority to bind this Court to propositions it has already rejected.... There’s another obstacle the dissent must overcome. Even if we accepted the premise that Apodaca established a precedent, no one on the Court today is prepared to say it was rightly decided, and stare decisis isn’t supposed to be the art of methodically ignoring what everyone knows to be true." https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Gorsuch was joined by all the liberal justices except for Kagan, who joined in Alito's dissent. Kavanaugh's concurring opinion is interesting because of his statement that "the precedent must be egregiously wrong as a matter of law in order for the Court to overrule it." There is a lot of stuff to unpack in this decision.
More_Cowbell
(2,241 posts)The Roberts court has shown that it's willing to overturn precedent. I look at every decision of theirs suspiciously to see what they're saying about the issues they really care about, that are coming up in the future.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(130,523 posts)Three of the four liberals joined the majority, and two of the conservatives dissented. Apodaca really was a terrible case, almost on a par with other bad cases like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson; it should have been overturned. Stare decisis doesn't mean decisions should never be overturned; now we will have to see what kind of cases this court thinks fall into the category of those that should.
JohnnyRingo
(20,870 posts)Seems to indicate that it's hard to get nine people to agree on something.
True though that a person begins the trial as presumed innocent.
still_one
(98,883 posts)
Lokilooney
(322 posts)As another ruling which then becomes precedent...From what I understand the dissenting judges reasoning was they didn't want to overturn a precedent. And we know how bad that could be, I mean look at Brown V. Board of Education, partially overturning Plessy V. Ferguson, tsk tsk, don't they know a ruling is always set in stone?
Polybius
(21,900 posts)Most recent was a case last month.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142454278