“Morrison thought the jurors would easily agree: Not enough proof. But in the room, the conversation veered from the facts of the case to the crime spike in New Orleans. They began bringing up other victims, as if they were somehow relevant to his guilt.”nytimes.com/interactive/20…
“Morrison remembered a juror saying, ‘If the prosecutor said he should be off the streets, then we needed to put him away.’ Morrison continued, ‘I felt like they were bringing in these outside frustrations without looking much at the facts of this particular case.’” 
“After a 1/2 hour, the foreman went around the table. 10 members agreed to find Shannon guilty of murder. Morrison & her ally stood their ground. In almost any other state, the jurors would have continued to deliberate. In Louisiana in 2011, a vote of 10-2 (or 11-1) was enough.”
“When the judge praised the 2 prosecutors for “1 of the quickest homicide cases I’ve had,” Morrison felt a surge of anger. Whenever she drove by the corner where Ralph Cole was killed, she was haunted. From time to time, she also thought about how thwarted she felt in jury room.”
“Last October, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether split verdicts violate the Constitution. Its decision is expected in the coming weeks or months. If the justices end the practice, they will finally close a chapter in American jurisprudence.”
“2 states— because of laws based in discrimination — have for decades been allowed to disregard a fundamental premise of our legal system. A result, for some defendants like Shannon, has been years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit.”
“And for jurors like Morrison, forced to stand by as convictions take place over their serious objections, a result has been a feeling of powerlessness — as if justice had been denied not merely to the defendants but, in a sense, to them too.”
In 2018, Louisiana voted to end nonunanimous verdicts. “But the law applies only to defendants who are charged w/crimes going forward. Thousands remain in prison, convicted in nonunanimous verdicts of the past. Estimates suggest that about 2,400 of them are serving life.”
The pending Supreme Court case seems promising. Here’s Gorsuch at oral argument asking whether they should “forever ensconce an incorrect view of the US Constitution for perpetuity, for all states & all people, denying them a right that we believe was originally given to them?”
And here’s Kavanaugh citing racist tradition: “The rule in question here is rooted in a — in racism, you know, rooted in a desire, apparently, to diminish the voices of black jurors in the late 1890s.”
An extraordinary read by @emilybazelon. Powerful photos. A history on the right to a jury trial. Legal analysis of the Supreme Court case that could finally provide relief to thousands of victims of a racist practice designed to undermine truth. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
