High court won't make unanimous jury requirement retroactive

[thesquanderer]

5. It is indeed complicated. If the crime occurred many years ago...

...witnesses could have passed away by now, or have fading memories... physical evidence may be gone... "beyond reasonable doubt" becomes that much harder to prove with the passage of time. As the article points out, advocates for the other side feared “the release of violent offenders who cannot practically be retried.” But as I posted above, the states still have the option of providing new trials, the decision does not prohibit it. Hopefully they will find some reasonable way to deal with it on a case by case basis. Though things decided "case by case" can have an annoying habit of being decided one way or the other based on someone's skin color.