Document Type
Brief
Publication Date
6-18-2019
Abstract
Amici are law professors and social scientists whose research and teaching address empirical and constitutional questions about jury unanimity. They have a strong interest in ensuring that this Court is fully informed about the empirical evidence that demonstrates that allowing non-unanimous verdicts in criminal cases undermines the right to a jury trial, as well as the Framers' recognition that a unanimous jury verdict is fundamental to the Sixth Amendment jury-trial right. Accordingly, they also have an interest in ensuring that the Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury verdict, which this Court has held is guaranteed in federal criminal trials, is fully applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.<\p>
This case raises a question central to the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to a jury trial: whether an individual may be convicted of a crime and, in Petitioner Evangelisto Ramos's case, sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor, without the benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence-when two of the twelve jurors who heard his case did not concur in the guilty verdict. The Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal answered this question in the affirmative, citing this Court's splintered decision in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972), and Louisiana precedent holding that "non-unanimous twelve-person jury verdicts are constitutional," J.A. 22. These precedents are inconsistent with the text, history, and values of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments and should be overruled.<\p>
Since the Court decided Apodaca, empirical research and legal developments have undermined the reasoning of both the plurality's opinion and Justice Powell's concurrence. Empirical studies have flatly disproven the many assumptions on which both opinions relied, and this Court's subsequent decisions have likewise rejected every other basis for the Court's conclusion. To be consistent with empirical evidence, the views of the Framers, and subsequent case law, this Court should overturn Apodaca and hold that criminal defendants in state court, like criminal defendants in federal court, cannot be convicted except by a unanimous verdict of their peers.<\p>
Recommended Citation
Ellsworth, Phoebe C. and Lempert, Richard O., "Ramos v. Louisiana: Brief of Law Professors and Social Scientists as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner" (2019). Appellate Briefs. 63.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/briefs/63
Comments
Amicus: Diamond, Professor Shari Seidman; Ellsworth, Professor Phoebe C.; Hans, Professor Valerie P.; Hastie, Professor Reid; Lempert, Professor Richard O.; Marder, Professor Nancy S.; Penrod, Professor Steven D.; Rose, Professor Mary; Saks, Professor Michael; Sommers, Professor Samuel R.