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A divided Supreme Court of Louisiana ruled that a ban on nonunanimous jury verdicts will not be applied retroactively, which means up to 1,500 inmates who were convicted by split juries will not get a new trial.
The ruling (pdf) on Oct. 21 in State of Louisiana v. Reddick, court file 2021-KP-01893, comes out of the appeal of Reginald Reddick, who challenged his 10-2 conviction for a 1993 second-degree murder after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that nonunanimous criminal jury verdicts were unconstitutional.
One Louisiana justice dissented, and another dissented in part.
Retrying those already convicted by less-than-unanimous juries in the state would impose too great an administrative burden on the courts and was not required by the state constitutional amendment voters approved in 2018 requiring unanimous jury verdicts going forward, the Louisiana high court found....