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Today we filed an amicus brief in SCOTUS in Ramos v Louisiana. In 2018 La. voters overturned the use of nonunanimous jury verdicts. But there’s no retroactive relief for those convicted under this system which was created by the state in 1898 to disempower Black jurors.
How do non-unanimous juries disempower Black jurors? “Bobby and I saw from the beginning that our vote wasn’t going to matter. We were outnumbered,” said one of two Black jurors serving on a jury w ten whites in a murder case involving a 20 yr old Black defendant.
Before lunch a white woman on the jury seemed to be leaning w/the two Black jurors in favor of manslaughter. At lunch all the white jurors ate together. “When they returned from lunch, all ten white jurors wanted to vote for second-degree murder; there was no convincing them..”
One of the two Black jurors recalled: “When I left that jury it took me a couple of weeks to get myself together.”
READ our brief. @DanielHarawa & @KristenJisHere pulled the laboring oars on this one. naacpldf.org/wp-content/upl…
