State laws in Louisiana and Oregon allowed people accused of serious crimes to be convicted by a non-unanimous jury. The Supreme Court's ruling Monday changed that -- and by weakening the strength of precedent, maybe Roe v Wade and a whole lot more.
What does the right to a unanimous jury verdict have to do with abortion, or school prayer, or federal environmental regulations? Stay tuned.
In the short run, Monday's decision was a victory for Evangelisto Ramos, who in 2016 was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury vote of 10-to-2 in Louisiana. The adoption of the non-unanimous jury rule in Oregon, Gorsuch wrote,"can similarly be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial and ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries."
On Monday, however, the 1972 decision came tumbling down. The six-justice court majority — composed of conservatives and liberals — said the earlier ruling was a mistake. "Where is the justice in that?" replied Justice Gorsuch."Not a single member of this court" is prepared to say that the 1972 decision was correct, he noted."Every judge must learn to live with the fact that he or she will make mistakes ... But it is something else entirely to perpetuate" a wrong"only because we fear the consequences of being right."
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