Five Kinds of Bad Jurors Warrant a ‘No’

The most important proposition on the Nov. 6, 2018 ballot is Amendment No. 2 to require unanimous juries in all felony cases. Unanimous juries are already required in capital cases, but 10 of 12 jurors is what is required to convict or acquit a criminal defendant charged with 2nd degree murder, rape, armed robbery, and a host of other offenses punishable with hard labor.
If this amendment passes, it will mean that hundreds of hardened criminals will be released to prey on the public. If it passes, a single hold-out rogue juror will result in a mistrial and no conviction.
The U.S. Constitution does not require unanimous juries. Just the opposite is true. When the Sixth Amendment was working its way through Congress, Madison proposed and the House adopted a requirement for unanimous juries. However, the Senate rejected that idea, and the Sixth Amendment requires an “impartial jury,” not a unanimous jury.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld Louisiana’s system of non-unanimous juries as a fair and orderly way to administer justice. Unanimous juries give one person the power to release a hardened criminal.
There are five types of jurors you don’t want:
• Revolutionaries and felons who oppose our system and will vote against convicting anyone of anything,
• People who believe in jury nullification (they don’t agree with a law such as life imprisonment or drug laws and thus won’t convict anyone of those crimes),
• Oddball jurors who cannot decide one way or the other,
• Corrupt jurors who accept a bribe, and
• Perhaps most serious of all, jurors who are intimidated by a threatening phone call to themselves or family. If there is one such person on a jury, that criminal will walk free.
The reason Proposition No. 2 passed the legislature is because of the cry of racism. Over and over, we were told that non-unanimous juries were included in the 1898 Constitution. But the reality is, the current law was drafted by the Constitutional Convention of 1973 — and that constitution does not have any tinge of racism attached to it!
Proposition No. 2 represents a real and present danger to law-abiding citizens. Many people will die if these criminals are allowed to go free. There is no protection provided in our state for jurors who are subject to threats or intimidation. There is no money to remove them from the area or the state.
The reality is that the juror who is threatened by a gang or a thug will simply have to face the music if he votes for conviction and then has to return to his neighborhood, perhaps a poor neighborhood where crime is rampant.
The Louisiana Constitution’s Declaration of Rights is already more protective of the rights of criminal defendants than any constitution in America.
Those who want to require unanimous juries for all felonies would allow ONE PERSON — who is biased against our system or who has been threatened or intimidated — to release a person guilty of 2nd degree murder, rape or armed robbery, despite guilt being proven beyond a reasonable doubt to 11 other jurors.